It is equal parts thrilling and breathtaking to realize the Oregon men’s basketball team has continued its season for a longer stretch than all but a handful of teams. This includes all four No. 1 and all four No. 2 seeds from the NCAA Tournament.
Perhaps most surprisingly, the Duck men lasted longer than the Duck women; Oregon, a No. 9 seed in the Pacific-10 Conference tournament, lost by a point to No. 4 Arizona, ending its season with a 13-17 record.
The Ducks lost 11 of their last 12 games, playing the final nine without point guard Nia Jackson, who succumbed to knee injuries against Washington State. Opponents scored 77.1 points per game against Oregon, which averaged 76.3 per game offensively, on the season.
Jackson averaged 17.0 points and 5.7 assists per game in her 21-game season, marks that led the Pac-10 at the time, and she was named All-Conference for her efforts. Junior forward and academic standout Amanda Johnson garnered All-Pac-10 honorable mention notice, while freshman forward Deanna Weaver earned All-Pac-10 freshman honorable mention honors.
A six-member senior class gradually gave way to three of Oregon’s burgeoning freshman talents in Weaver, guard Ariel Thomas and forward Danielle Love during the second half of the Pac-10 season. Thomas showed an aptitude for running head coach Paul Westhead’s offense, while Love showed flashes of impressive outside shooting and committed press defense.
The Ducks will be young and presumably hungry next season. Only one of the top seven scorers, Kristi Fallin, will be lost to graduation. Oregon’s sophomores will have further schooling in the up-tempo system and should allow Westhead the best rotation of talent and depth he will have had as head coach. The team should be much better in the short term.
But how much better? Herein lies the fundamental flaw of the Oregon women’s basketball program. The Ducks might have a shot at cracking the top half of the conference standings, falling in line with former athletic director Pat Kilkenny’s stated metric for success. (Kilkenny hired Westhead, a long-time friend, to replace Bev Smith in 2009.) As presently constructed, building a program on par with Stanford and UCLA in the Pac-10 appears to be a monumental challenge.
Westhead is 72. He has championship rings from the NBA and the WNBA, something no other coach does. He loves the game of basketball, and the passion is evident in practice and on game days.
Westhead also has a contract that allows him to leave Eugene for five months out of the year to return to his hometown of San Diego, and he spent much of the preseason on crutches after sustaining a leg injury. He has earned the right to dictate his own terms through his record, but that directly conflicts with the Oregon athletic department’s goals for building a program.
None of his three assistants — Dan Muscatell, Kai Felton and Keila Whittington — seem expressly set on succeeding Westhead if and when he leaves. That puts the long-term future of the program in jeopardy, more so after putting significant resources toward an up-tempo team. What happens if Oregon’s next coach wants to slow it down?
Kilkenny and the previous athletic administration learned the hard way that Oregon was not a destination job for men’s basketball. It does not appear to be one for women’s basketball, either, despite a new arena and a state that is traditionally supportive of girls’ basketball at the lower levels.
Many of these questions are best answered at another time, but in Year Three of Westhead’s rebuilding phase, time becomes a precious commodity. The long term may quickly be catching up to the short term.
Westhead’s contract expires in three years. Will he seek an extension? Will he be granted one?
How will Oregon women’s basketball satisfy the demands of the athletic department? Of the student-athletes? And what, exactly, might those demands be?
The immediate, on-court future for the Ducks is promising. Off the court, a new administration that has much to clean up from years past must answer tough questions.
Here’s to those answers coming soon.
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