Spotlight Shines On Civil War

For five years running, the Pac-12 regular-season championship in women's basketball has ended up — in whole or in part — in the state of Oregon.

From 2015 to 2017, Oregon State took home the regular-season title, sharing it once with Arizona State. For the past two years, Oregon has brought it home.

If that trend continues, the upcoming weekend will have been a crucial 48 hours. No. 4 Oregon hosts Oregon State in Matthew Knight Arena on Friday (7 p.m., Pac-12 Network) and the Beavers will host a rematch Sunday (1 p.m., ESPN2).

In the event of a sweep by the Ducks, they'll have a three-game lead over their rival in the conference standings. Two wins, and the Beavers will overcome their current one-game deficit and have a game on Oregon, plus the tiebreaker.

"This is an important week," UO coach Kelly Graves said. "It's a huge week for college basketball, and certainly in this state. … Both of us play really good basketball and we really play hard, and represent the state well."

Oregon State brings a 16-2 record and a No. 7 national ranking into the opening game of the doubleheader Friday. The Beavers, like Oregon, dropped a Pac-12 game at Arizona State, and they're coming off a loss last week to Stanford — putting them at 4-2 in conference play, one game behind the Ducks, the Cardinal and UCLA.

The Beavers are led by the backcourt tandem of Mikayla Pivec and Destiny Slocum, who each average about 15 points per game. And as usual, Oregon State has a towering post presence: 6-foot-4 freshman Taylor Jones leads the Pac-12 in blocked shots with 1.9 per game, and 6-6 Kennedy Brown is third with 1.6 per game.

Thanks in part to all that size — not to mention the tenacity of Pivec — Oregon State leads the conference with 45.6 rebounds per game. Earlier this week, Graves took to Twitter and pointed out the competitiveness between the Ducks and Beavers on the boards, with OSU entering the week fourth nationally in rebounding margin at plus-13.4 per game, and Oregon seventh at plus-11.3.

The photo accompanying the tweet featured UO senior forward Ruthy Hebard. The message, needless to say, was not lost on her.

"I was like, 'Hm, Ok, rebounding is going to be big,' " Hebard said with a laugh prior to practice Wednesday. "And he already mentioned it to me (Wednesday) when I was walking in (to practice). So we're definitely going to focus on rebounding for the rest of the week. And hopefully that's going to be a big key to both games."

Along with being elite rebounding teams, Oregon and OSU have been dead-eye three-point shooters as well; last season, Sabrina Ionescu and the Ducks led the Pac-12 from behind the arc and the Beavers were second. Each team's accuracy is down this season — Oregon from .415 to .367, OSU from .376 to .356 — but Graves suspects this weekend could see a bump for both.

"My guess is, on a night like Friday, all their senses are gonna be heightened," Graves said. "They're not gonna miss those shots, because of the moment."

Both atmospheres this weekend will provide a bright spotlight in which to shine. Oregon and Oregon State each has announced a sellout.

That means a capacity crowd of 12,364 will pack Matthew Knight Arena on Friday, with another 9,600 in Gill Coliseum on Sunday.

"My first game of college basketball was against the United States in front of a packed house," UO freshman Jaz Shelley said, recalling the Ducks' exhibition victory over Team USA in November. "I think I'm adjusting to it well (but) I'm still shocked every time we come out to play and there's 10,000 people here. It's amazing."

On Friday, those thousands of screaming fans will be on the side of the Ducks. On Sunday, it will be a different story.

"Our team's gonna be fired up for that game," Graves said. "Sabrina's done a lot of really great things here; so has Ruthy. They've never won at Gill. I've never won in Gill. That's certainly something we'd really like to do."

University of Oregon Athletics

Players Mentioned

Ruthy Hebard

Sabrina Ionescu

Jaz Shelley

Related Videos