Bill Oram: The steep decline of Oregon women’s basketball raises big questions about Ducks and Kelly Graves

Where is the bottom for Oregon women’s basketball?

Perhaps this doesn’t feel like the day for such a severe examination. The Ducks played their hearts out on Sunday and pushed their ranked rivals to the brink, losing 64-60 to No. 18 Oregon State.

It was their best performance in weeks.

But if now is not the time to ask the big questions about coach Kelly Graves and his team, when will be?

The Ducks have lost five games in a row by an average of 12.2 points per game. Their 2-8 Pac-12 record puts them in a tie for last in the conference. Their next four games are against teams ranked in the top 25.

Predicting wins and losses can be a fool’s errand, but a nine-game losing streak not only is not out of the question, it is the likely outcome.

How did they get here?

Last summer, Graves told me that his program, which boasted the best team in America prior to the shutdown in 2020, was still viewed as “one of the elite programs” in the country.

Would anyone agree with that now, with the Ducks, now 11-12 overall, facing the prospect of finishing with a losing record for the first time since Graves’ first season in 2014-15?

“We’re not used to being in this position,” Graves admitted. “All we can do is try to win the next one.”

It should be stressed that he could have easily been talking about a victory on Sunday.

The Ducks tied the game at 41 early in the fourth quarter and on four more occasions cut the Beavers lead to one. They could have done it again with 12 seconds left, but Phillipina Kyei, who scored 16 points and pulled down 18 rebounds, split a pair of free throws, giving OSU an opening to seal the win with two free throws from Talia von Oelhoffen.

Kyei, Chance Gray and Grace VanSlooten combined for 45 points. Do that more and they’ll lead the Ducks to some wins.

But weird things happen in rivalry games.

Oregon and Oregon State have a way of delivering thrillers, year after year. This was the first time OSU swept the season series since 2010. If the game had swung the other way, it would have relieved some of the pressure in the short term. But it would have only been a blip on what has been a steep decline.

There are no clear answers.

Last season, the Ducks missed the NCAA Tournament for the first time since Graves’ inaugural season in Eugene, when Oregon finished 13-17 and 6-12 in conference play.

“Our first year here we didn’t win a ton,” Graves said Sunday, “but obviously it was our first year. So that’s to be expected in a program that hadn’t won a lot.”

It’s hard to digest because Graves has been such a consistent winner throughout his career. He won 10 straight conference titles at Gonzaga then took over a Ducks program in shambles and by his third year had it in the Elite Eight, an achievement that not for nothing coincided with the arrival of Sabrina Ionescu.

With Ionescu, the Ducks reached another Elite Eight, then a Final Four and were the favorites to win an NCAA championship in 2020.

“We obviously built something pretty special and we kind of let that go,” Graves said. “There’s a lot of different reasons.”

The Ducks are young, they’ve had injuries.

But it’s become an annual rite that Oregon’s top players jump into the transfer portal. Last year it was Endyia Rogers, Sedona Prince and Te-Hina Paopao. All five of the decorated five-star recruits who signed with Oregon in 2020, including Paopao, transferred and will finish their careers elsewhere.

The momentum of Sabrina and her magic is all but gone.

Graves is positive by nature. He spoke Sunday of still believing that this year’s team was capable of “good things,” although it’s not clear what that would even mean at this point after having dug such a significant hole.

“We’re still working to win this year,” Graves said, “but I’m confident we’ll get the program back to where we want it to be.”

Graves has a career record at Oregon of 223-102. His track record would indicate he should get a lot of latitude to figure things out. He’s built up plenty of goodwill.

But he is 61. Coaching and recruiting in college basketball are tougher than they’ve ever been. He’s already rebuilt Oregon basketball from the ground up once. You can’t help but wonder if he really has the desire to do it all over again in the Big Ten.

In a college sports landscape more competitive and cutthroat than ever, will he even get the chance?

There’s a lot to consider right now in Eugene, but that might be the biggest question of all.

MORE FROM BILL ORAM