Kelly Graves smiled and laughed.
“Are you concerned about your job security?” a member of the media asked the Oregon women’s basketball coach. Oregon (11-16, 2-12 Pac-12) is on a nine-game losing streak, capped by its 74-55 home defeat to No. 9 UCLA on Sunday night, and cut adrift from a conference that finds itself in the national spotlight.
But he smirked, Graves doesn’t worry — as he’s often exclaimed, he’s a positive guy! But Sunday’s presser was a shift from the norm.
“We’ve had a pretty good run here. We’re struggling — everybody knows it, [but] we are the ones who’ve set the bar here,” Graves said. “We haven’t reached our own bar, for sure, but the bar was set in the last 10 years.”
That’s not to say that this isn’t as far away from that elite level as the Ducks have been, but with the understanding that this season is effectively over, Oregon’s eyes are on the future. It’ll be forced to move on from several players, whether through graduation or the ever-present transfer portal, and rebuild the culture of excellence that led it into national championship-contention before the COVID-19 pandemic.
It’ll take more than what remains after this season is over to return to that mountaintop. Despite the possibility of Phillipina Kyei, Grace VanSlooten, Chance Gray and injured freshman Sofia Bell returning, it’s obvious that there’s two or three more steps that this team must take down the road before it can compete. Especially in the Big Ten.
Graves acknowledged that fact while backing his team. In the postgame, he said, “[This team] is working their butts off…it’s going to take recruiting, it’s going to take working the portal… We’ve been there and we can get back there, but I’m not taking anything away from the group that’s out there busting their butt.”
It’s difficult to watch, sometimes, but he asks for faith.
A program that has established what it means to play basketball at Oregon surely deserves that respect. Especially in the modern age of college sports, instant and constant success are demanded — and its a level that Oregon has drifted further and further from in recent years.
Oregon has lost consecutive games by 19, 37, 22 and 33 points. All of those schools were inside the top 18 of the A.P. poll, but that’s where Oregon has been in years past. It doesn’t look like the same team at all. In the first five minutes against UCLA, the Ducks gave up open looks possession after possession. The Bruins’ Londynn Jones had 12 shots from beyond the arc — and only converted three of what seemed like an endless stream of opportunities.
In conference play alone, the Ducks are bottom of the Pac-12 for field goals — both made and attempted, and sit 11th of 12 for total rebounds and steals. Their ability to compete relies on their opponent’s inability to do so — something that is uncommon in the conference that could produce a champion.
There’s any number of excuses: Oregon’s strength of schedule is fifth-hardest in the nation, the Ducks lost multiple key players both to injury and the transfer portal and those that have remained healthy are forced to play outsized minutes. The reality is, though, that this team cannot continue at the level it’s at. That credibility that it has built, as strong as it may have been, is not untouchable, and Kelly Graves should (eventually) start to worry.
