Ruthy Hebard scored a career-high 29 points on 11-of-15 shooting and Sabrina Ionescu added 18 points in Oregon’s 79-63 loss to No. 17 UCLA on Sunday in Los Angeles.
UCLA won its 22nd consecutive game at home. The Bruins are tied for the fourth-longest home winning streak in the NCAA.
Oregon falls to 12-6 and 2-4 in Pac-12 play. The Ducks now return home for three consecutive games at Matthew Knight Arena.
The Ducks turned the ball over 14 times before halftime, finishing with 20 turnovers compared to UCLA’s eight.
“Unfortunately our guards, our primary ball-handlers, just lost complete composure and had just too many stupid turnovers,” head coach Kelly Graves said in a radio interview with Terry Jonz. “It crushed us. We were never able to really recover from it even though we did a lot of really good things today.”
UCLA shot 43.8 percent from the field and was led by Monique Billings, who scored a career-high 30 points and pulled down 14 rebounds. Oregon shot a comparable 43.6 percent overall.
Outside of Ionescu and Hebard, no Oregon player had more than six points. UCLA had four players overall score in double digits.
“I was really impressed with UCLA,” Graves said. “They’re more athletic than us, top to bottom, but they play their butts off. They pursue every ball. Hopefully our kids see that and learn from that.”
Oregon opened a five-point lead at 19-14 near the end of the first quarter. The hosts outscored the Ducks 26-10 in the second quarter to take a 40-29 halftime lead.
At intermission, Hebard had 18 points on 9 of 11 shooting. The rest of the roster was 5 of 17 from the field for 11 points. The Ducks held UCLA to 1-of-7 shooting from 3-point range.
A Hebard jumper cut the UCLA lead to nine points, 62-53, with 9:04 remaining, but UCLA answered with four consecutive points to open a 13-point lead. UCLA had its largest lead of the game at 19 points with 57 seconds left.
“We tried to get her the ball as often as possible, maybe we didn’t get it there as much in the second half,” Graves said of Hebard.
Oregon split its four-game road trip with wins over Cal and USC.
“A four-game road trip is tough,” Graves said. “Three of those teams were ranked. The Pac-12 didn’t do us any favors in that scheduling but you have to play them all.”
Follow Jonathan Hawthorne on Twitter @Jon_Hawthorne