As head coach Kelly Graves and his team awoke on March 12, everything the players had worked so hard for, all of what the sold-out Matthew Knight crowds had cheered for, had been stripped away.
Just four days before, the Ducks defeated the No.7 Stanford team for a Pac-12 Championship victory: much-needed revenge from the prior year, when the Ducks fell short to the Cardinal in the conference title matchup. The Ducks, led by record-shattering guard Sabrina Ionescu and now-WNBA superstar Ruthy Hebard hoped to continue their winning ways all the way through Madness to a national title.
Ranked in the nation’s top four in every single weekly ranking throughout the 2019-20 season, the Ducks’ dreams of shiny rings and confetti seemed feasible. But these dreams would have to wait.
Fast forward eight months: The goal for Oregon women’s basketball is the same. The team may again have a chance, but it will have to do without Ionescu, Hebard, and former forward Satou Sabally, a consistent double-digit point-scorer in the seasons before.
But as stars from the Ducks’ roster pivoted into professional basketball, it didn’t mark the end of an era, but simply a change in personnel.
Graves and the Ducks will return to play in late November with a plethora of young talent accompanied by five upperclassmen poised for leadership roles.
Oregon will add five five-stars to the roster, all of which were ranked in the nation’s top 35 players coming out of high school.
Guard Sydney Parish, ranked No. 10 overall by ESPN, will add strength on offense through sound shooting ability and range unmatched by many in her class. Graves spoke highly of her all-important versatility.
“In my opinion, Sydney is the best pure shooter in the country, but she’s more than that – she can score in multiple ways,” Graves said in an interview with 247Sports.
In the departure of Hebard, adding strength at the forward position was high on Graves’ wishlist. 6-foot-4 five-star forward Kylee Watson will complement this role.
Even in an Oregon team filled with an historic level of rookie talent, returners still make up the meat of the roster, and will play a massive role moving forward.
At guard, the Ducks have two legitimate returners in Taylor Chavez and Jaz Shelley. Chavez, a junior, accelerated last season, averaging over 19 minutes per game and scoring in the double digits on six different occasions.
Shelley, a Moe, Australia native, is due for a breakout season. The then-true freshman guard appeared in all 33 of the Ducks’ 2019-20 season games. Her season high came against UC Riverside, scoring 32 points and knocking down 10 shots from beyond the arc.
Senior forward Erin Boley sticks out as well. The Hodgenville, Kentucky, native is one of only two seniors on the roster, but her value goes far beyond the locker room leadership, and well onto the court. Starting in all 33 games of her junior season, Boley averaged 9.2 points and 2 rebounds per game while shooting a highly-respectable 44% from three-point range.
Oregon women’s basketball will return to play with a very different identity than before, but its vision, its goals and its determination for a trophy come late March have remained the same.
