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Pac-12: Oregon, Oregon State split civil war weekend

By Ben Dull

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Headline of the weekend in Pac-12 hoops: Oregon defeated Oregon State for the first time since 2011.

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The women’s basketball civil war had been rather one-sided for most of the decade. Oregon State extended its winning streak against Oregon to 14 with its overtime victory on Friday. With the win at home on Sunday, the Ducks snapped that streak and remain atop the Pac-12 standings as the only team left with just one loss in conference play.

More notes and observations from the two weekend tilts between the Ducks and the Beavers:

1. Eight players logged 40+ minutes Friday night in Corvallis. Sabrina Ionescu, Maite Cazorla, Kat Tudor and Mikayla Pivec played every second of regulation and overtime.

Fast forward to Sunday, where Ionescu, Cazorla, Satou Sabally and Marie Gulich played all 40 minutes in Eugene.

The Ducks were down one starter both nights — Lexi Bando was in a walking boot as the team announced that the senior would be out indefinitely.

2. The Ducks have leaned some on a 2-3 zone this season. Marie Gulich didn’t need much time to figure out how to exploit it.

You can even see Gulich directing traffic as she jumps in and out of the paint, eager to get a rare post touch with both feet in the lane.

Sabally tried to cover her up on one overtime possession. Katie McWilliams wisely dribbled to the corner. Sabally couldn’t resist the urge to jump out to her, which allowed the entry pass to Gulich, who pushed the lead to three with a turnaround jumper:

3. Gulich finished with a monster line on Friday — 28 points, 15 rebounds (5 offensive), 5 assists and 3 blocks in 43 minutes.

The Ducks sent a double team at her from the opening tip on Sunday. Those efforts were far more fruitful than this attempt on Friday:

Gulich’s offensive rebounding arguably hurt the Ducks more than her back to the basket scoring. Gulich rebounded two of her own misses Friday, immediately diming up Kat Tudor (34 points, 7-10 3PT on Friday) for a three-pointer both times. Without being fed those two looks on a tee, maybe Tudor’s night goes differently.

4. Don’t take that point as an attempt to cheapen Tudor’s career night. I think these two plays do a nice job of illustrating her impact on that game:

Oregon State got a few nice looks off of flare screens this weekend. Tudor didn’t have much time to get that shot off with a long defender like Sabally fighting through that screen to get back into the play.

It’s tough to be sure of what went wrong for Oregon here just by watching the live broadcast, but Tudor was at the root of it:

Either one or both of Ruthy Hebard and Sabally may have been mixed up on what defense the Ducks were in. Both players react a beat late and run to the corner together because Tudor was about to be one pass away all alone in the corner.

The ball swings around, Oregon is forced to scramble and Gulich ends up getting fouled. Amid that scramble, Tudor actually ended up being wide open in that same spot.

5. 19 of Oregon’s final 21 halfcourt possessions on Friday ended with a Sabrina Ionescu pick and roll. 13 of those 19 were run from the left side of the floor with Hebard setting the screen. Ionescu pick and rolls accounted for 18 of the Ducks’ 25 fourth-quarter points.

It’d be easy to say Oregon got too one-dimensional down the stretch of a tough game on the road. It’s even easier to do so in hindsight. All things considered, I disagree with that line of thinking.

There’s an argument to be made for either side. One thing was clear, though: Oregon State was inviting that approach. Gulich was guarding Hebard for most of the fourth quarter and overtime. The Beavers guarded those pick and roll possessions by having the three weakside defenders stay home while Gulich sat in the paint:

A good screen was going to give one of the best players in the country a practice shot from 7-to-15 feet, barring a great play by Ionescu’s defender to contest her shot from behind without fouling. (Credit to Katie McWilliams, who did that exact thing once. I believe she hit a pretty big shot later on, too.)

Oregon State was handcuffed to a certain extent — stick somebody else on Hebard and the Ducks would be able to pick at that matchup.

Related: this was great play design out of a timeout by Kelly Graves:

Several Ionescu side pick and rolls started the same way. Maybe Scott Rueck expected to see another. Maybe Graves was expecting just as much. Regardless, it worked and the Ducks were able to get a score on that trip.

6. Oregon played with a lead of 20 points or more for much of the third quarter on Sunday. Take note of the score at the start of this great stretch from Satou Sabally:

Under the 5:00 mark of the second, this was still a 10 point game. In that clip alone, you saw: 1) Sabally face up and take it to the rim. 2) She crept into the paint just enough to bother Gulich, recovered to come away with the steal, then 3) stroked a three a few seconds later. 4) Sabally came hard to double Gulich the next time down to help force a turnover.

The Ducks continued to get stops and pour it on, ending the half on a 14-4 run on their way to snapping that 14-game losing streak against the Beavers.

The Oregon teams hit the road this weekend to take on Utah and Colorado.

Photo of Satou Sabally via Chris Pietsch, AP

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