The Ducks take on No. 10 Arizona State tonight, and then Arizona on Saturday, while riding the momentum of their first three-game winning streak since the middle of December.
The difference this time around is that this new streak consists not of early season non-conference wins, but of victories over Pacific-10 Conference teams Oregon State, USC and UCLA.
“Even though we were getting some wins in non-conference play earlier, now it’s a whole different level of Pac-10 play,” Oregon’s assistant coach Phil Brown said. “I think the difference now is that we have confidence, given the last three games, and we now know how to win those games.”
The Ducks (13-9 overall, 5-7 Pac-10) now have a legitimate shot of finishing the season with a good enough record to earn a bid to the Women’s National Invitational Tournament. But Brown said the team is still focused solely on finishing out the regular season, and has not really thought about postseason play.
“We have not spoken about postseason play or even the Pac-10 Tournament. We haven’t even spoken about specifying a certain number of wins,” Brown said. “We’re really just focusing on the process. We want to win every game and play our best, and a part of that is focusing on working hard, executing on the offensive end, and rebounding hard.”
Oregon’s recent success has come as a result of solid play from Tamika Nurse, who earned the Pac-10 Conference Player of the Week honors this week for the first time in her career.
After an unproductive game against Oregon State on Jan. 28 that saw Nurse commit five turnovers and make only one field goal, the sophomore point guard bounced back to score a career-high 22 points in the Ducks’ 76-60 win over UCLA, and then put up another 16 points to lead Oregon to victory against the Trojans last Saturday.
“Well, it means I had a good weekend, and that’s cool,” Nurse said about being named Player of the Week. “And it’s nice to have a momentum streak and to know that we can compete with teams like Arizona State because we took them down to the wire when they were here.
“We’re confident. Not too confident, but enough to know that we can go out and compete.”
The Ducks lost 80-70 to the Sun Devils when the teams clashed at Mac Court last month.
Against USC, Oregon also benefited from junior guard Kaela Chapdelaine’s 5-of-5 field goal shooting, and an additional 14 points from post Carolyn Ganes, who has been starting in place of the injured Jessie Shetters.
It looks as if things are finally coming together for Oregon, which has had more than its fair share of problems this year.
The Ducks’ season got off to a horrible start when they lost 64-60 to Vanguard in an exhibition game in November, then they began losing players to injury, and spent most of the middle stretch of the season trying to figure out how to close out games and get away with a win.
“Some of that’s been disappointing,” Brown said. “It hits you where it hurts, in the heart, and impacts everyone. But that’s life. For us, we have five senior players and we want them to go out on the highest possible note, having great memories of their senior year. In a lot of ways, we’re playing for our seniors and we’re playing for pride.
“Everyone wrote us off and said we were going to have a terrible season. We want to make them see ‘oh hey hang on, this team is fighting hard, they’re scrapping and playing with a lot of heart.’ That’s all we really want to do.”
Now, with all these problems behind them, the Ducks play both the Arizona schools this weekend, hoping to keep their winning streak alive.
“It wasn’t looking too good there for a bit,” senior forward Eleanor Haring said, referring to the four-game losing streak the Ducks had to shake off before their 70-63 win over Oregon State. “But we’ve kind of bounced back from that, and it’s going to be nice going on a road trip to an away game with that momentum and confidence.
“We’re really excited, we just need to go and play our game.”
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