SAN JOSE, Calif. — This is where the real season begins for the Oregon women’s basketball team.
After a Pacific-10 Conference regular season that netted eight victories, Oregon must be hungry for more. The Ducks must win the Pac-10 Tournament, held at the HP Pavilion, to avoid missing the postseason for the first time since the 1992-93 season.
The WNIT is out. So is the NCAA Tournament, unless, well, you get the picture.
And you couldn’t blame the Ducks if they had a sense of déjà vu heading into their first game Saturday, set to tip off at 7:15 p.m.
Losers in the team’s final contest, 54-52 to UCLA, Oregon (12-15 overall, 8-10 Pac-10) now takes on the fourth-seeded Bruins. The Ducks are ranked fifth in the tournament.
“I think that both teams kind of know each other by now,” senior Alissa Edwards said. “We just, at the end of the game, we gave it away and didn’t play as hard as we should have. I think we’re going to take that into our next game, play hard and not give up.”
Oregon and UCLA (17-10, 12-6) have a storied history throughout existence, and have produced some intense battles. Before this season, Oregon had won six straight against their Southern California foes. This year, UCLA took both games, one in convincing fashion, 93-68.
Overall, the Ducks lead the career series, 19-18. But throw the records and the scores out the window. With a tournament that is packed into just four overall days, numbers can get distorted.
“You just never take anything for granted,” head coach Bev Smith said. “You never assume. Just forget about the past. The next game is the future, and just believe, and I think that’s what we did in the WNIT last year.”
The Ducks have a short, but impressive history against Pac-10 teams in the postseason. That postseason, of course, is reflected in last year’s conference tournament and WNIT.
Oregon defeated Washington State and Washington before succumbing to eventual Pac-10 Tournament champion
Arizona State.
The Ducks then added victories over Washington again and Oregon State en route to the WNIT Championship.
That championship came with a full bench that had yet to go through the adversity Oregon has this year. The Ducks are now down to nine players after junior Kayla Steen tore her ACL late in the game against UCLA last week.
Junior Cathrine Kraayeveld is looking to get back to full strength, although she is still below 100 percent. Edwards has battled bumps and bruises all season, and it seems, since a Dec. 19 contest against Montana, sophomore Kedzie Gunderson has a permanent broken nose. Maybe, it just seems that way because she’s been hit there so often.
It’s a blessing for Oregon that it was able to finish in the top-six in the Pac-10. That gave the Ducks the opportunity to open the tournament Saturday instead of Friday.
“Without even thinking of that, it is important for us,” Smith said. “We do have a shorter bench. There’s no doubt about it.”
If Oregon is able to defeat the Bruins, the Ducks will play Sunday at 3 p.m. That game will be against the winner of the Stanford-California/Arizona State game, set to begin at 5 p.m. Saturday.
But the Ducks aren’t looking that far ahead.
“We’ve got to stay focused on UCLA for the most part,” Kraayeveld said. “They have a chance to go to the NCAA Tournament, so they want to play hard and play well.”