The Oregon women are back at home tonight, hosting Arizona at 7 p.m. after going winless on the road last week in the Bay Area. The Ducks lost games to No. 15 Stanford and California, which dropped the Ducks into a tie for seventh place in the conference standings.
Tonight’s game is a chance for Oregon (13-9 overall, 4-8 Pacific-10 Conference) to avenge its 81-72 overtime road loss in the last meeting with the Wildcats.
“We played horrible last time down there against Arizona, but we were in the game,” Oregon guard Kedzie Gunderson said. “We’re back at home now. We play much better at home and have a great chance to get two wins under our belt.”
The Ducks host No. 18 Arizona State on Sunday at 12:30 p.m. The Sun Devils narrowly escaped upset at home Jan. 12 against Oregon. Junior guard Emily Westerberg buried a three-pointer with less than 14 seconds remaining in regulation, giving Arizona State a 44-43 win.
In the loss against Arizona earlier in the season, Gunderson clocked only 10 minutes on the floor. The senior defensive specialist was held to two points and one assist.
Like Oregon, Arizona is rebuilding this season after reaching the second round of the NCAA Tournament last year. The Wildcats’ 3-10 conference mark (7-16 overall) leaves them ninth in the Pac-10 with little hope of making an encore appearance at the Big Dance. They’ve lost four straight games and were swept at home last weekend by the Los Angeles schools.
Despite its flaws, Arizona ranks in the top-five in the Pac-10 for steals (fifth with 210), offensive rebounds (fourth, 329), free-throw percentage (third, 70.6 percent) and turnover margin (fifth, plus-1.91).
Arizona guard Natalie Jones leads her team in scoring. The senior from Anchorage, Alaska, was defensive MVP of the Wildcats last year and is a threat at both ends of the court. She has sunk a team-best 83 percent of her free-throws and is averaging 14.5 points per game.
In Arizona’s 90-64 loss to UCLA last Saturday, Jones ended with a team-high 22 points, hitting 8 of 10 from the field. Her freshman teammate Kelsey Burns came off the bench to score a career-high 15 points and notch three rebounds.
Returning home to McArthur Court might be just what the Ducks need this late in the season. Oregon has not yet won a conference road game and has only two losses at home this year. Conference front-runner Stanford is the only Pac-10 team that has won at The Pit this season.
“We’ve got home-court advantage this weekend and are definitely a better team than last time we played them (Arizona),” Oregon’s Carolyn Ganes said.
Oregon coach Bev Smith hopes to see her team improve on mistakes made in last week’s losses.
“We just turned the ball over too many times,” Smith said. “We did not do a very good job of playing off of how they attacked and we did not have very good penetration. That’s been the focus for us this week. We have two games at home that we need to win in order to get us in good position for the Pac-10 Tournament.”
With the conference tournament less than a month away, the pressure is on for teams to grab wins and improve their seeding.
“That’s our main focus right now,” Ganes said. “At this point if we want to make it to the NCAA Tournament we’re going to have to win the Pac-10 Tournament. We’re really hoping that we can get everything together and just peak at the right time.”
After the Arizona schools, the Ducks have two more home games this season. Their final road trip is next week, pitting them against Washington and Washington State. Oregon beat both teams at home in January.

[email protected]