It was quite a morning at Matthew Knight Arena.
After two straight losses, the No. 2 Ducks (25-3, 14-2) redeemed themselves in Sunday’s 96-78 senior day victory over USC (15-12, 5-11) in the final home game of the season.
The Ducks welcomed back junior Ruthy Hebard after sitting a game and a half due to injury, celebrated seniors Oti Gildon and Maite Cazorla and dominated behind Sabrina Ionescu’s 17^th career triple-double and Erin Boley’s career-high 32 points.
Here are three takeaways:
Ruthy’s Return
Hebard played her first game back after sitting out the second half of Monday’s game against OSU and all of Friday’s game against UCLA due to a knee injury. The junior played on limited minutes Sunday after being cleared to play that morning. Her presence brought back a sense of confidence to the Ducks. With her in the post, the Ducks amped up their defense, grabbing rebounds and propelling a heightened effort on offense. 
Hebard played 16 minutes and scored 13 points on top of eight rebounds.
“I thought it was a huge psychological boost, no doubt about it,” Oregon head coach Kelly Graves said about having Hebard back. “She is such an important player, I think the most dominant player in the conference. … I think it gave everybody a lift.”
Ionescu and Boley lead hot shooting
The Ducks shot 52.5 percent from the field, marking their best shooting performance since playing Stanford almost two weeks ago. Boley led the Ducks with a career-high 32 points on top of eight 3-pointers and a career-high 11 field goals.
Ionescu followed the redshirt sophomore with her 7th triple-double this season (17^th career) (13 points, 13 assists and 12 rebounds). The triple-double also broke the NCAA record for triple-doubles in a single season.
Following Oregon’s worst 3-point performance of the season (6-of-26 vs UCLA), the Ducks made 14-of-24 shots from the behind the arc with more than half of those coming from Boley.
“I think that’s kind of how basketball works,” Ionescu said. “Sometimes you can come out and shoot lights out and sometimes the ball just doesn’t want to go through the net. We have to be able to weather that and find other ways to score and not get stagnant on offense. I think we did that tonight.”
Oregon revived
The Ducks started this season knowing they’d be wearing a target. The pressure has only added as the team has never dropped below the AP Top-7 and earned the poll’s No. 2 ranking last Monday.
Yet, this past week that target took a beating. On top of losing Hebard, Oregon dropped two games in a row, one Monday night to No. 12 OSU and another against an unranked UCLA. The Ducks needed a comeback, they needed to relight a surge of momentum, especially with the No. 1 seed for the NCAA Portland regional up for grabs.
That spark came during the second quarter of Sunday’s game when Oregon went on a 13-1 run to reclaim a lead over USC, after dropping the first period to the Trojans 27-25. The Ducks continued the energy and claimed the win, proving their hunger for finishing the regular season with another Pac-12 title; Oregon is currently two games ahead of two-way tie for second place between OSU and Stanford.
“We opened our eyes and realized that teams are out to come get us regardless of what the score is at halftime,” Ionescu said. “I think that is going to make us better, knowing that we have to play to that level of excellence game in and game out, doesn’t matter, teams are going to beat us. I think we are all hungry and ready to come out and played today to prove ourselves.” 
Follow Maggie Vanoni on Twitter: @maggie_vanoni