Calling Kristen Bitter: The Oregon women’s basketball team needs a new player. Finish out your senior volleyball season, trade in your volleyball jersey for a basketball uniform and suit up.
Nicole Garbin, your record-breaking soccer season is unfortunately over. It’s time to break out the basketball jersey, brush off any rust and trade the soccer field for the hardwood of McArthur Court.
OK, so both options have little chance of happening. Oregon is stable. It has enough healthy bodies to play the season.
Kristen Forristall’s announcement Monday to leave the Oregon women’s basketball team reeks of selfishness. It leaves the Ducks one serious injury away from a crisis. Already, Oregon entered the season shorthanded after Gabrielle Richards’ decision to leave the team and return to Australia.
Oregon has ten players left, of which nine can be expected to provide contributions – redshirt freshman Mary Sbrissa is raw. The thought of a serious injury must have coach Bev Smith twisting and turning at night.
Injuries are going to happen. They happen in every sport, to every team, and can cause players to miss a few games or an extended amount of time.
Forristall leaves her teammates with the season less than two weeks away. Clearly, Forristall’s issues with Smith are deeper than I initially thought. Knowing this, if Forristall wasn’t wholeheartedly interested in playing this season, why did she bother returning to the program?
Then again, maybe this was her plan, to leave the team now knowing it would hurt Smith the most. In that case, she is unwittingly hurting her teammates too, whom she thanked for their support in the press release.
Forristall should have left in the offseason when Oregon could have taken the time to find another player to take her place. Now her teammates are forced to try and run an up-tempo offense without a wing player who never lived up to her potential in an Oregon uniform.
This season offered Forristall her best opportunity to shine, with plenty of minutes available following the graduation of Chelsea Wagner, Kedzie Gunderson and Brandi Davis.
Unfortunately, Forristall is declining interviews, unwilling to express her side of the story.
The public is forced to go by a press release that says Forristall left as a result of “irreconcilable differences.” Essentially, Forristall and Smith don’t get along. Coaches have had disagreements with athletes before, notably Phil Jackson with Kobe Bryant, and have found compromises that help the team the best.
Smith says “the perceived differences were resolvable,” which in my view labels Forristall as a quitter, more interested in her personal needs than doing what’s best for the team.
Forristall can always change my opinion; she can pick up the phone and call. Until she does, Forristall is abandoning her teammates before what appears to be a tougher season than the 14-15 finish last year, well short of the NCAA Tournament.
Go ahead Forristall, prove me wrong.
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