No. 23 Oregon women’s basketball’s (5-0) 70-54 rout over the Grand Canyon University Antelopes (2-2) was about as dominant of a win as the Ducks have had or will have this season. Oregon held the lead in this contest for 37:21 of the 40 minutes, while the Lopes only led for 88 seconds.
Oregon didn’t perform exceptionally well on the offensive end, as it shot 37.7% for the game. The team’s defensive and rebounding effort, however, fueled the win on Monday night.
“I don’t think we were great tonight, we certainly didn’t shoot the ball well,” head coach Kelly Graves said. “We just didn’t shoot the ball, we didn’t finish that well, we didn’t shoot it great, some turnovers in those first couple minutes.”
The Ducks moved up to No. 23 in the AP Poll before their Monday evening contest against Grand Canyon. Oregon sat undefeated, while Grand Canyon started 2-1, with a double-digit win over Power 4 Arizona State on Thursday.
The suffocating defense from both Amina Muhammad and Sofia Bell got the Ducks started, as they forced three turnovers in the first five minutes. During that same stretch, Peyton Scott revved up the offense by hitting her first two tries from deep, burying one from each corner.
Scott finished with a team-leading 17 points, four rebounds and two assists.
“That felt really good, just to get some in-rhythm shots to start the game always feels good, and then I feel like it jumpstarted other people to get hot and get some shots down,” Scott said.
Oregon’s offense ballooned its early lead to a five minute, 20-0 run, which almost kept the Lopes in single-digits to open the game. The first quarter ended 22-10 in favor of the home team, which was a lead the Ducks wouldn’t give up.
“We executed and made a couple of shots. When we get rolling, we’re pretty good, we got a lot of different weapons and we had a nice run there,” Graves said.
The Ducks actually doubled the amount of points the Lopes had at one point, and the first half ended 36-18 without much resistance from the visitors.
The Lopes opened up the third quarter on a 8-0 run fueled by the switch from a zone to man-to-man defense and cut the lead to 10 before Scott drilled another triple to silence Grand Canyon.
GCU chipped into the lead at times, but a scoring drought that lasted over three minutes practically crushed all hopes that it had at reentering this game.
Oregon outrebounded GCU 47-32, while the Ducks’ defense forced 12 turnovers, 35% from the field and 25% from deep. A lot of that was due to the omnipresent Amina Muhammad, who finished with 11 points, 10 boards and four fouls drawn.
“Great board work, I thought Amina played really well, she made her free throws which was awesome. I’m really proud of her, she looked like she wanted the ball inside,” Graves said.
Muhammad made three trips to the line on Monday night, and she shot 5-6 in those trips. Her ability to be a presence inside at her size has become invaluable to the Ducks on both sides of the floor.
The Ducks will need to improve their offense if they want to compete with Auburn on Wednesday night, which will be Oregon’s second power four matchup of the season — the first one was an upset victory over the then No. 12 Baylor Bears
“We gotta do things a little bit tighter, a little better,” Graves said.
