As the Oregon football team found out Friday afternoon, rivalry matchups are never a sure-win affair, no matter the perceived quality of the opponent.
The Oregon volleyball team learned the same lesson Friday evening, but still managed to escape unscathed as it defeated a pesky Oregon State squad in straight sets. It improved to 15-13 in its regular season finale at Matthew Knight arena.
The Ducks won by scores of 25-21, 25-20 and 25-21, while never leading by more than five points at any juncture. Oregon State, who now sits in ninth place in the Pac-12 standings with a 6-23 overall record, drew within 23-21 in the final set. Oregon was able to finish the set and the match though after an Oregon State attack error was followed by a block at the net by a group of Ducks.
“(Oregon State) played pretty well for a lot of the match and they actually played really well in the first two sets,” Oregon senior Martenne Bettendorf said. “They were up a lot of the time — they had an edge. I think we just played a little bit harder.”
It was Bettendorf, as well as junior middle blocker Kasey Nady, who provided the offensive punch for the Ducks. Bettendorf led all players with 13 kills and improved her season kill-count to a team-leading 353. Nady, meanwhile, played one of her strongest matches of the season and added nine kills, while hitting .381-percent. As a team, the Ducks out-hit Oregon state .227 to .138.
On a night in which Bettendorf and fellow senior Chelsey Keoho played what will likely be each of their final home matches in Oregon uniforms, adding a Civil War victory to their resume gave a silver lining to what has been a tumultuous season thus far. It also may very well have added the necessary final touch to their NCAA tournament resume and could ultimately keep their season alive.
The Ducks entered the match ranked 53rd in the NCAA RPI rankings and find themselves mixed in with a handful of teams who will nervously await word from the NCAA selection committee this Sunday. The committee will announce the 64 team tournament bracket at 6 p.m. Sunday on ESPN U, and at this point, the Ducks have to be considered a bubble team at best.
“I never want to do this again as long as I live,” Oregon head coach Jim Moore said with a smile after the match. “The tournament will not be as much pressure as the final stretch of the season was for us.”
The Ducks were ranked 13th in the nation in the preseason coaches poll and were expected to contend for a conference title in the wildly competitive Pac-12. However, the season has unfolded far from the way Moore or anybody else expected it to for the Ducks. At one point, Oregon found themselves an 11-11 team that had lost four-of-five matches and looked nothing like a unit that belonged in the tournament.
But they have found a way to correct course, and the Ducks are now winners of four of their final five regular season matches.
Moore says the Ducks are playing better than they have all season and he believes they will hear their name called come Sunday.
“I really think we deserve to go” Moore said. “Right now we’re pretty good. They wanna take the teams that are playing the best at the end and we’re playing pretty well.”
Oregon’s players and coaches spent over an hour after the match meeting with fans and signing autographs, and Bettendorf and Keoho gladly posed for pictures while celebrating their respective senior nights.
Oregon has spent the majority of its conference schedule treating each match as a do-or-die scenario; knowing that one loss could sink the ship after they got off to such a poor start. For the first time in weeks, the Duck don’t have another match to look forward to on their schedule and they are able to take a breath and relax. It’s up to the selection committee to decide what will happen next.
Follow Jarrid Denney @jdenney50