The road has not been kind to the Oregon women’s
basketball team.
The Ducks (5-4) ended a three-game winning streak with
a 74-58 loss at Brigham Young on Wednesday, and have
now dropped eight of their last 10 road games dating
back to last season.
Junior guard Shaquala Williams became the 16th Oregon
player to score 1,000 points in a career, but she did
it with a season-low eight points on 3-of-14 shooting
against BYU.
As a team, the Ducks shot a season-worst 36 percent.
“We were a little flat, but there’s no excuse,”
first-year Oregon head coach Bev Smith said.
“Defensively, we weren’t disciplined to stay within
our game plan. (BYU) stuck to their game plan and had
discipline.”
Brigham Young (5-3) hit 11-of-25 three-point attempts,
while the Ducks could muster just two treys on 15
attempts (13 percent).
Sophomore forward Cathrine Kraayeveld tied a
career-high with 14 points to pace the Ducks, while
senior point guard Edniesha Curry scored 11 and senior
post Alyssa Fredrick had 10.
“We did a good job at getting inside at times, but
we’ve still got to find a little bit of an (offensive)
answer,” Smith said.
Trailing 41-31 with 17:49 to play, Oregon senior guard
Jamie Craighead drained a jumper, her only bucket of
the game, and two buckets by Kraayeveld (one a
three-pointer) and another by senior Ndidi Unaka
brought the Ducks within four at 44-40.
But then Oregon’s defense caved in.
BYU’s Erin Thorn sank two threys to spark a 15-1
Cougar run that put the game out of reach.
“There was nobody there to pick us up and say ‘Let’s
go,’” Kraayeveld said. “We need more intensity
defensively. Defense is the thing everybody feeds off,
which translates to the offensive end.”
Oregon will try to end its road struggles when it
begins Pacific-10 Conference play at UCLA next
Thursday. The Ducks will stay in L.A. to take on
Southern California on Dec. 22 for a 4 p.m. telecast
on Fox Sports Net.