Women’s basketball: As 9 players return, Ducks plan to run their way back to March

Welcome to the second half of Lookout Eugene-Springfield’s hoops preview. Today: the Oregon women, fresh off an NCAA appearance and bringing back enough guards to run a track meet. Read our men’s preview here.

Head coach: Kelly Graves, 12th season at Oregon
Last season: 20-12, 10-8 Big Ten
Postseason: Lost at Duke in the NCAA Tournament Round of 32

Out with the old: Deja Kelly, Phillipina Kyei, Peyton Scott, Alexis Whitfield, Salimatou Kourouma, Nani Falatea

In with the new:

• Astera Tuhina, 5-9, guard, senior: 7.8 points, 3.7 rebounds, 3.7 assists at Washington State.
• Mia Jacobs, 6-2, forward, senior: 18.3 points, 10 rebounds at Fresno State.
• Avary Cain, 6-1, guard, sophomore: 1.5 points, 0.7 rebounds, 0.6 assists at UCLA.
• Sara Barhoum, 5-10, guard, freshman: 4-star recruit from Clackamas High School.
• Janiyah Williams, 5-9, guard, freshman: 4-star recruit from Edmond Memorial (Oklahoma).

The preview

Kelly Graves does have a challenge.

After returning to the NCAA Tournament this spring for the first time since 2022, Graves goes into his 12th season at the helm of the Oregon women’s basketball team missing his top four scorers from last year’s run, due to graduation.

But that’s it.

So yes, while Graves’ Ducks are still seeking to regain the swagger that brought Oregon to four consecutive Sweet 16s, three consecutive Elite Eights and a pair of Final Fours last decade, when he looks into the practice gym he knows what he sees and — more importantly here, two weeks before the start of the season — likes what he sees.

The Ducks do have roles to fill. But with nine players returning from last season’s roster, Graves’ Ducks are looking to start out fast.

“We were able to move through some things a little quicker than we normally would,” Graves said of the season’s first few weeks of practice. “But so far, I really like what I see. Great energy.”

There will still be a bit of an acclimation process — to fill the shoes of Oregon’s departures, the Ducks are bringing in Cain from UCLA, first-team All-Mountain West selection Jacobs from Fresno State and Washington State’s Tuhina. They also added Williams, a four-star freshman guard out of Oklahoma, and Barhoum, a four-star sharpshooting guard from Clackamas.

But Oregon’s success in 202-26 will largely be dictated by the large group of familiar faces taking a step up.

And for Graves, that begins with sophomore guard Katie Fiso. The Washington Gatorade Player of the Year as a senior at Garfield High School, Fiso played in 25 games as a freshman — with one of her best performances coming in Oregon’s first-round NCAA Tournament win over Vanderbilt. In 19 minutes off the bench, Fiso scored eight points with a pair of rebounds, an assist and a steal.

“She’s the heart and soul out there,” Graves said. “We have these Catapult systems, so we’re monitoring heart rate, how many steps they take, decelerations, accelerations — all that data. She’s off the chart. She’s going about a mile or a mile and a half more every day than everybody else. But that’s who she is.”

Not that the rest of the Ducks aren’t running.

Graves’ team this season will be guard-heavy. The Ducks have nine on the roster and are a team that, outside of the 6-foot-4 Amina Muhammad, will tower over no one.

However, the Ducks will run. And while Graves said the team has been working on not getting too turnover-prone when getting off to the races, the focus right now is on speed. After 15 practices, Graves had tracked an encouraging 2-to-1 assist-to-turnover ratio.

“We’re not very tall,” Graves said. “But we’ve got a lot of mobile players, so we’re trying to spread it out. We saw a lot of that in the Big Ten last year and we’ve adjusted to it.”

Graves said often this fall he’s arrived at his office inside Matthew Knight Arena with the lights already on in the practice gym. Players are getting their work in. They’re spending time together. And after a period where Oregon’s roster was in constant flux following the pandemic, it’s a calming scene for the Ducks.

Yes, they have questions and some players that need to step up. But there’s already cohesion there, and Graves has coached long enough to know that comes before anything else.

“I think our returners have something to prove,” he said. “A lot of them were in smaller roles last year, and we’re asking them to step up, and I think they’ve responded really well to it. It’s great to see. I think they’ve really bought in.”