Bev Smith would prefer not to focus too much on regular-season results in light of the Pacific-10 Conference Tournament’s one-and-done format.
“We’ve gotta put those games away. It’s a new season,” the Oregon women’s basketball head coach said. “They’re obviously looking for an opportunity to finish their season on a positive note, and so are we.”
They are the Washington Huskies (7-21, 3-15), Oregon’s first opponent of the tournament. The conference’s seventh seed (the Ducks) and 10th seed (the Huskies) play in one of two play-in games; Arizona (eighth seed) and Washington State (ninth) play in the other.
Oregon (9-20, 5-13) swept the Huskies for its only season sweep and first against UW since the 2001-02 season. Indeed, the Ducks’ last win in any capacity was their 77-69 victory over Washington at McArthur Court – Oregon has lost 11 of its past 13 games. Some semblance of assurance lies within the knowledge that Ducks have indeed done this before.
“We want to get defensive stops to give us momentum offensively,” said junior guard Micaela Cocks, who averaged 19.0 points per game in the Oregon series sweep. “We’re looking at what we did well against them the other games and making sure we go to that – getting the ball inside, making sure we get a strong post presence, getting inside-the-paint scoring. We did that well in the last game here, so we want to do that.”
The Pac-10 tournament begins today at 6 p.m. with the Oregon-Washington matchup, held at the Galen Center in Los Angeles. Quarterfinal action begins tomorrow, semifinals on Saturday and the tournament finals on Sunday.
In the tournament’s seven-year history, Oregon has a 1-2 record in play-in games (the Ducks have never reached the finals). The Washington game, then, has all the makings of a trap that Oregon has to avoid.
“Our players need to have that narrow focus,” Smith said. “That’s our job as coaches to look beyond that (first game).”
Beyond that is second-seeded Cal (24-5, 15-3), which narrowly held onto its seed after losing to UCLA and Arizona State in the second half of the Pac-10 season. Should the Ducks beat the Huskies, their next game would begin at 1:15 p.m. tomorrow – about a 17-hour turnaround between games.
“It’s just looking after our bodies straight after the game (and) mentally preparing ourselves,” Cocks said. “You get the win, well done, move onto the next game.”
Oregon was the seventh seed for the inaugural tournament in 2002, beating Washington State in the play-in game to face second-seeded Washington. The Ducks upset the Huskies, 78-64, before falling to third-ranked Arizona State in the semifinals. That team remains the lowest-ranked team ever to make the semifinal round.
Also on Oregon’s side of the bracket are the third-seeded Sun Devils and USC, knocked into the sixth-seed after Oregon State went 2-0 over the Los Angeles schools in Corvallis. The Beavers will take on UCLA in a five-four matchup, while top seed and regular-season conference champion Stanford is slated to face the winner of the Cougars/Wildcats contest on Friday.
The Cardinal are looking for their third consecutive Pac-10 tournament championship and sixth in eight years. Anything the Ducks can do to prevent that from happening – which would require something improbable and unprecedented in making the finals – they will.
“Someone needs to get them off their little perch,” sophomore forward Ellie Manou said.
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