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The Ducks bounced back from their UCLA loss, in part thanks to Jacobs, who grew up in Australia with two older sisters to toughen her up. She says the system at Oregon feels more like the Australian game.
Kelly Graves had boxing on his mind five days after UCLA handed Oregon its first loss of the year.
“I thought we had a pretty good plan,” the UO women’s basketball coach said. “What’s that Mike Tyson quote? Everyone has a plan until you get hit in the face.
“And we were hit in the face.”
It wasn’t a knockout punch — after a dreadful first half, the Ducks regrouped to outscore the Bruins in the second — but it was one that revealed the differences between a UCLA team that returned key pieces from its Final Four run last year and an Oregon roster built largely around underclassmen.
The Ducks do lean on their youth — especially at point guard, where sophomore Katie Fiso leads UO in points (15.0) and assists (7.6). But if there’s one player on Oregon’s roster who knows how to take a hit and keep going, it’s the veteran they brought in through the transfer portal: Mia Jacobs.
Jacobs’ sisters made sure of it.
Mia, 21, grew up in Perth, Australia, as the youngest of three siblings. Her older sisters, twins Amy and Claire, have three years on her.
While the girls enjoyed spending time at the nearby beach during Western Australia’s hot, dry summers, most of the Jacobs sisters’ time was spent on the basketball court, where Claire and Amy used their extra size and strength to bulldoze their way to victories.
They’d play until the mosquitoes got too bad — or someone came home crying.
“I did cook her in the backyards,” Claire said last year. “But she stayed resilient. She would always fight back.”
Graves sees that.
“Among my three boys, my youngest, Will, ended up being the best player out of them because he had to keep up,” Graves said. “They didn’t cut him any slack. If he wanted to play with them, he had to step up his level of play and got beat a lot, so he learned from it. It toughens you up a bit. He has great confidence from it — so does Mia. She gets beat up a little bit and has the confidence of, ‘Oh, I’ll come back. I’ll get the next one.’”
When Amy and Claire left to play for La Salle in Philadelphia in 2019, Mia said she thrived during her three years as an only child. She enjoyed being the focus of attention and used those backyard training sessions to excel on her own. She was a three-time state league MVP and, like her sisters, earned a scholarship to play at La Salle.
The trio combined for 64 starts during the 2022-23 season, with Mia averaging 9.3 points and 5.5 rebounds as the Explorers went 17-14. Her sisters helped her get settled in the U.S. and served as shoulders to lean on as she adapted from the heavy ball movement of the Australian game to the more one-on-one-centric style of the Atlantic 10 Conference.
Amy returned home to play professionally after that season, while Mia (Fresno State) and Claire (Nevada) decided to head west.
“Her growth physically and mentally toward the game has drastically changed,” Claire said in 2024 before Nevada faced Fresno State. “I think her decision to step away from me and Amy so that she could create her own name and own identity has been really good for her.”
Mia flourished in two seasons at Fresno State. The 6-foot-2 forward averaged 18.3 points and 10.0 rebounds while shooting 41% from the floor last season to earn first-team All-Mountain West honors.
She did that while often drawing double- and triple-teams on a Fresno State roster that had no other players average double-digit scoring or more than five rebounds on the season.
In deciding where to play her senior season, Jacobs wanted stability — she noted Oregon had no transfers out after last season. She wanted a place where Australians had played before, and Graves has had several during his tenure. And she wanted a system that matched her style, where she could be one of many pieces moving in offensive cohesion.
“It’s really similar to the Australian style of play,” Jacobs said. “It’s a step up from where Fresno was at. Higher pace. Bigger bodies. Being able to run the floor. Stretch the floor. Shoot. Drive. Create for each other. It’s the style of play that I’m used to. Being in that now feels like home and is normal for me.”
That “normal” feeling again comes with a challenge.
Jacobs has been solid this season, averaging 14.0 points and 5.7 rebounds while shooting a career-high 48% from the floor.
But as Oregon enters the thick of the schedule — where teams like UCLA will come out swinging — Graves wants to see Jacobs do what she’s always done: help the Ducks hit back harder.
“Mia has a little more to give,” Graves said.
A week after UCLA, the Ducks returned home to host Montana State and found themselves down 8-5 with 6:38 to play in the first quarter after a series of jabs from the Bobcats of the Big Sky Conference.
Then Oregon started throwing haymakers: Over the next three minutes, Jacobs connected on a trio of threes. When she eventually checked out of the game for the first time with 1:57 to go in the quarter, that three-point deficit had turned into an 11-point lead.
The Ducks finished with a 69-44 win to improve to 11-1. Sophia Bell led the Ducks with 15 points, and Ari Long and Fiso each added 10.
And then there was Jacobs, who finished with 13 points and 10 rebounds.
It was her first double-double as a Duck.
