Take a quick glance at the NCAA’s statistical rankings for women’s basketball, and one might notice a trend at the top of the pile. Scoring defense: Connecticut; Field goal percentage: Connecticut; Rebound margin: Connecticut; Scoring offense … Oregon?
That is not an error. Through 14 games, the Ducks are in fact leading the country with 87.1 points per game. As a result, they are 11-3 overall and 2-0 in the Pacific-10 conference.
“It’s a great start,” senior guard Micaela Cocks said. “It feels really good, the energy is really good. There’s a lot more games to go, though, so we’ve just got to take one game at a time and we know that there’s still a lot of things we’ve got to get better at.”
Westhead echoed Cocks’ sentiments and will not let the team get ahead of itself.
“We’re still in the process,” Westhead said. “I wouldn’t say we’ve arrived, but offensively we’re scoring the ball very well and the girls are getting the sense of the speed game. I think we’re going to get better, and hopefully our scoring will improve and increase.”
So far, the Ducks have been scoring plenty of points, overwhelming opponents with their frenetically paced offensive style. Of course, for all of the team’s running and gunning, it still has to score the old fashioned way. Westhead has been particularly impressed with the Ducks’ .809 free throw percentage to start Pac-10 play.
“For us it’s terrific,” Westhead said. “Eighty percent from the free throw line is more important than how many points you score.”
Oregon has outscored opponents this season by an average of 16.4 points per game. As a team, the Ducks are shooting .447 from the field and .369 from three-point range. An intense full court press has yielded 20.4 opponent turnovers per game, and Oregon has also grabbed 10.9 steals per contest.
Senior guard Taylor Lilley, the reigning Pac-10 player of the week, leads the team in scoring with 16.2 points per game. She has been impressed by the team’s hot start.
“I think we’re feeling pretty good right now,” Lilley said. “It’s a nice change from the past couple of years.”
Of course, that is not to say the team is flawless. Rebounding has been a focal point for Westhead throughout the season, and the Ducks have been inconsistent on that front. Their rebounding margin stands at exactly 0.0, meaning they average exactly the same amount of rebounds per game as opponents do.
“(Opponents) have been outrebounding us on the offensive rebounds as well,” Lilley said. “(Offensive rebounds are) just something we need, it’s kind of like our energy … we build off of that.”
Cocks emphasized the need for the team to create even more turnovers on defense and to overwhelm opponents with the press.
“As a team, on our pressing defense (it’s important to be) creating more turnovers off of that and putting them back in the hoop if possible,” Cocks said.
While the team is far from where it ultimately wants to be, there can be no doubting that it has come a long way. This is, after all, a team that scored a mere 56.6 points per game last year and finished with just nine wins. Already, the Ducks have two more wins than they did all of last year.
“It took several weeks for our players to get the sense of the press-run-press-run,” Westhead said. “It’s not natural to play that way, so you have kind of make in your blood. I think they’re getting closer to that. At practices this week, they’ve been after it, they’ve been up and down about as good as I’ve seen them.”
So don’t be surprised if Oregon holds its place atop the scoring pyramid. Indeed, Westhead would like to see the team averaging “100 or more.” 87 points is not quite good enough, and by the looks of things, Connecticut might have to get used to sharing space at the top.
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