Tag: Kelly Graves

WBB Recap: Ducks defense stops Lumberjacks in their tracks

Oregon began the women’s basketball season on a good note with an 81-48 win over Northern Arizona.

Oregon Ducks women’s basketball fans have to remember it’s just Nov. 6 and this is far from a finished product. The Ducks defense was sound and the offense was good enough, with some flashes of brilliance, as Oregon handed Northern Arizona an 81-48 loss inside Matthew Knight Arena.

Head coach Kelly Graves is working with almost a brand new roster with just four returners off of last year’s squad, so he’ll be mixing and matching lineups for quite a while.

Players such as Chance Gray and Grace VanSlooten will see the majority of the playing time. The only question will be who plays around them for the most amount of time. Freshman Sofia Bell out of Portland and redshirt freshman Sammie Wagner both made an impression as both played well.

Getting to know Kelly Graves’ Oregon Ducks ahead of the 2023 season tip-off

Oregon women’s basketball is led by three sophomores and they are surrounded with a Top 5 recruiting class for the 2023-24 season.

The Oregon Ducks women’s basketball program might still be haunted by that 2020 season when a national championship was in their grasp before the pandemic hit.

Kelly Graves has brought in great recruiting classes since but hasn’t been able to find the same success he enjoyed when Sabrina Ionescu was playing. Oregon might still be a year or two away from seriously contending to make a deep run in March, but that doesn’t mean they can’t make some noise in the meantime.

In the last season of the Pac-12, the conference schedule is a huge gauntlet and the Ducks will have to maneuver their way through. The talent is there to beat anybody. The big question surrounding this team is how quickly they develop chemistry and put it to good use on the floor.

Oregon has three tremendous sophomores and they have a Top 5 recruiting class to play with. If the Ducks gel as a team, they will finish a lot higher than predicted.

Kelly Graves hires Tre Simmons as new Oregon basketball assistant coach

Kelly Graves hires Tre Simmons as new Oregon basketball assistant coach

The Oregon Ducks are adding a new member to the coaching staff ahead of the 2023-24 season, announcing the hiring of Tre Simmons on Tuesday afternoon.

Simmons is a former Washington standout and a 14-year professional player overseas. For the Huskies, Simmons was an All-Pac-10 First Team selection in 2004-05.

“Throughout his entire collegiate and professional career, Tre has exemplified leadership,” head coach Kelly Graves said, via a press release from the university. “His energy and passion are contagious, and our team will love being around him. Tre has an innate ability to connect with people. That, in addition to his deep knowledge and love for the game, make him a tremendous coach and an ideal fit for our program.”

The hiring comes after Oregon saw assistant coach Sadie Edwards depart to take a spot on the Baylor Bears coaching staff last week.

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Oregon women’s basketball schedules home-and-home with Baylor

Oregon women’s basketball schedules a home-and-home contract with Baylor beginning this coming season.

Kelly Graves has always been aggressive when it comes to scheduling and he has continued that tradition by scheduling a former national champion.

Oregon and Baylor have agreed to a home-and-home series beginning with the upcoming 2023-24 season Graves announced Monday.

The Ducks and Bears will meet on Dec. 3 at the Ferrell Center in Waco, Texas, while Baylor will visit Matthew Knight Arena during the 2024-25 season.

“We are always looking to build a tough non-conference schedule and Baylor will be a marquee non-con opponent for us,” Graves said. “A matchup against such a quality program will help us prepare for the gauntlet of the Pac-12 schedule, and it will be good for our young team to take a great opponent in a tough environment.”

December’s matchup will be the first since the teams met in the 2019 NCAA Final Four in which Baylor, then ranked as the nation’s No. 1 team, came away with a 72-67 victory in Tampa, Fla. The Bears lead the all-time series 4-0, with a 1-0 home record and a 1-0 record in Eugene.

Baylor has qualified for 19 straight NCAA Tournaments, the fifth-longest active streak in the country, and advanced to the Second Round in last year’s tournament. The Bears have won three national titles (2005, 2012, 2019) to go with 15 Sweet 16 appearances.

But the Bears haven’t been quite the same after coach Kim Mulkey left for LSU, which just won last year’s national title. Baylor finished the 2022-23 season with a 20-13 record.

4-star point guard Katie Fiso commits to Oregon

4-star recruit and Class of ’24 point guard Katie Fiso out of Seattle has committed to Kelly Graves and the Ducks women’s basketball team.

The Oregon Ducks football team has had a history of grabbing talent out of Washington’s backyard.

Now it’s the women’s basketball program’s turn.

Kelly Graves and his Duck team received a verbal commit from 4-star point guard Katie Fiso out of Garfield High School in Seattle.

Fiso averaged 22 points a game last season as she led Garfield to its third straight state championship on the 3A level. She’s also the first commit out of the Class of 2024 for the Ducks.

Nearly every school on the West Coast was recruiting Fiso, including Oregon State, UCLA, USC, and California.

With the departures of Te-Hina Paopao and Endyia Rogers, the Ducks are still in search of a pure point guard and they hope Fiso fits the bill.

 

Former North Alabama guard announces transfer to Oregon

Former North Alabama and defensive specialist guard Skyler Gill has announced her transfer into the Oregon women’s basketball program.

Former North Alabama guard Skyler Gill has announced via Twitter that she has committed to Oregon for the 2023-24 season.

The 5-foot-11 guard from Wichita, Kansas is a defensive specialist while scoring nearly 11 points per game and eight rebounds for the Lions. Gill has been named the Atlantic Sun Conference Defensive Player of the Year two straight times.

Gill is the fourth player to come out of the portal and land in Eugene in this offseason as she joins former Liberty guard Kennedi Williams, former Miami University guard Peyton Scott and former USF guard Priscilla Williams to be added to the Ducks roster.

After missing the NCAA tournament last season and seeing numerous players leave Oregon via the portal, Ducks coach Kelly Graves is trying to remake the roster in order to compete in a tough Pac-12 Conference and reach March Madness once again.

Oregon is bringing in a Top 10 recruiting class and the Ducks still have three more scholarship spots remaining.

Ducks add former 5-star recruit Priscella Williams to the roster

Former 5-star recruit Priscilla Williams is looking to rebound from injury and jump-start a promising career at Oregon.

The transfer portal continues to spit out talent that is headed to Eugene to play for Oregon Ducks women’s basketball team.

This time it’s former five-star recruit and South Florida guard Priscilla Williams from Branson, Missouri. She was at Syracuse for the 2020-21 season and missed 2021-22 with injury before joining the Bulls for last year’s campaign.

At-6-foot-2, Williams was the No. 9 overall recruit in the Class of 2020 and she didn’t disappoint in her freshman season. She appeared in 21 games while making 20 starts, averaging 8.7 points, 3.2 rebounds and 3.2 assists per game. She cracked double figures nine times with two 20-point efforts. She shot 37.5 percent from the floor and 37.0 percent from 3-point range.

Although it was more than a year later, her injury still hampered her some at South Florida where Williams played in 17 games, averaging 6.6 minutes a game, scoring 38 points (2.2 per game), grabbing 18 rebounds (1.1 per game) and shot 40.9 percent from deep (9-for-22). She showed her potential in a season-best 12 points in 12 minutes, going 4-for-6 from 3, in a 75-50 win over La Salle.

“Priscilla is a proven player at this level and possesses great leadership skills. She has great length and is an elite shooter with great range, and also is extremely versatile at both ends of the floor,” Oregon coach Kelly Graves said. “She’s eager to prove herself and get back to the player she can be. Priscilla fits in nicely with our current group. She is a great teammate with a fun personality that gives us experience in a young backcourt. She’s just scratching the surface of her potential and we cannot wait to see what she can do at Oregon.”

Williams has two years of eligibility remaining.

 

Oregon women’s basketball adds Miami (OH) transfer guard Peyton Scott

Kelly Graves adds former Miami (OH) guard Peyton Scott to the 2023-24 women’s basketball roster.

Kelly Graves is finalizing his Oregon Ducks women’s basketball roster for the 2023-24 season and he has added transfer guard Peyton Scott from Miami (OH).

The former Redhawk averaged 15.4 points per game last season and during her four-year career, Scott poured in 17 points per contest. She also shoots 83 percent from the free throw line last season and was named to the Third Team All-MAC squad.

Scott’s best season came during the 2020-21 year when she averaged 21 points a game as a sophomore.

The Ducks continue to add guard talent after seeing the likes of Te-Hina Paopao and Endyia Rogers leave the program. Oregon added former Liberty guard Kennedi Williams a couple of days ago.

Liberty point guard Kennedi Williams transfers to Oregon

The Oregon Ducks women’s basketball program has added Liberty point guard Kennedi Williams to the roster.

Kelly Graves is gaining a player instead of losing players via the transfer portal.

The Oregon Ducks women’s basketball program announced that point guard Kennedi Williams, formerly of Liberty University, will be headed to Eugene to continue her career.

At 5-foot-7, Williams will be an option to replace Te-Hina Paopao at the point position. She played in all 33 of Liberty’s games last season, starting at point guard in each of the last 24 contests. Her 126 assists were the most by a Lady Flame since the 2014-15 season and became the first player to lead Liberty in assists in back-to-back seasons since Sadalia Ellis did so in three straight campaigns (2013-16).

Williams is from Douglasville, GA and will have two years of eligibility remaining.

Oregon Ducks basketball 2023 transfer portal tracker

The transfer portal has been a busy place for the Ducks as of late, with players going and coming. Here’s an updated tracker of the movement.

We are at the point of the college basketball season where everything seems to be in flux. Players are moving in and out of the transfer portal daily, while some others are making decisions about their professional careers as well.

For the Oregon Ducks, both in the men’s and women’s basketball worlds, it has been a busy time. Since the season ended for both Dana Altman and Kelly Graves a few weeks ago, a number of players have announced that they would be leaving the school in search of a new team to play for, and in the case of the men’s team, at least one player has announced that they will be joining the Ducks going forward as well.

In order to keep everything straight, we wanted to throw together a transfer portal tracker for both Altman and Graves’ squads, keeping tabs on who is coming, who is going, and some potential additions via the portal as well.