Head coach Kelly Graves has bought into the portal and Oregon is fighting back to prominence
In 2020, the Oregon Ducks were led by now WNBA champion Sabrina Ionescu. The Ducks were poised for a late postseason run, only for the COVID-19 pandemic to cancel March Madness and, in hindsight, end Oregon’s run of dominance.
Now in 2025, Oregon is part of the Big Ten. Having moved out of the national spotlight, they are moving back into the conversation.
To talk about that progress and the Oregon side the No. 9 Ohio State Buckeyes will face Sunday in Columbus, Land-Grant Holy Land reached out to our Oregon SBNation friends at Addicted to Quack.
Carl “The Badwater” Blackwell took the time to answer questions about head coach Kelly Graves’ acceptance of NIL and the transfer portal, the names coming from the portal and a big returning from injury who can make life difficult for Ohio State in the paint. That and more in the latest edition of Visiting Locker Room.
Land-Grant Holy Land: Head coach Kelly Graves went on record this season talking about how he was late to the NIL and transfer portal game. He joked at media day how the transfer portal has been great for teams taking Oregon players (like the Buckeyes bringing Taylor Mikesell and Chance Gray back to their home state). The by-product is the transfer of UNC star Deja Kelly and Texas roleplayer Amina Muhammad.
How have the two new Oregon names propelled this Ducks team to a surprise start to the season?
Addicted to Quack: The conclusion of last season brought a moment of reckoning for Kelly Graves. He had been late to embrace and utilize the transfer portal in this new age of collegiate athletics. Some old-guard coaches decided they didn’t want to go through the additional nonsense of what college basketball has become, and you have coaches like Tara Vanderveer of Stanford and Tony Bennett of Virginia retiring, and it’s certainly not been limited to those two.
I interviewed coach Graves before the start of the season. It’s a very interesting conversation and you can check it out here: https://www.addictedtoquack.com/2024/10/30/24281576/atq-exclusive-interview-with-oregon-wbb-head-coach-kelly-graves
Graves was talking to Dan Lanning at a golf event about how college basketball has changed, and Lanning’s advice was/is that the portal needs to be embraced and used. You need to use it as the weapon and tool that it is. Men’s coach Dana Altman also talked with Graves about using the portal, as he has been using it for years, long before the new rules opened up the transfer floodgates.
As a result, Graves has gone all-in with using the portal to rebuild the Ducks. You mention two players, but the Ducks actually took in seven players from the transfer portal. Four of the five leading scorers for Oregon are transfers that came in this year: Deja Kelly (North Carolina), Amina Muhammed (Texas), Nani Falatea (BYU), and Elisa Mevius (Siena). The leading scorer for the Ducks is Peyton Scott, who transferred last season but went down with a season-ending ACL injury four minutes into the first game of that season.
Scott is currently out with another, albeit less serious knee injury. These four, along with Alexis Whitfield, are productive enough that a player or two can have an off-night offensively and others will rise to the occasion. All of these transfers provided depth to this team that Oregon has not had in quite a while – the Ducks bench is the most productive in the B1G.
LGHL: An existing name that entered the year with an injury is 6-foot-8 center Phillipina Kyei. She’s getting back to 100 percent and the performances are reflecting it. What does Kyei bring to the game when she’s in it and how do teams effectively stop the big?
ATQ: From what I’ve seen in the past few games, Kyei is back at 100%. The obvious thing with her is that you can’t teach height. In the past, Phili has been a talented work in progress, as she started playing basketball very late in her school days and was picked up by Oregon as a raw talent with a heck of an upside. Kyei had been initially a bench player and had a lot to learn in the previous three seasons.
Part of Kyei’s development has been in fundamentals, but part has also been mental. As she has matured as a player, Phili has also matured mentally, gaining more and more confidence in her game and abilities as she has grown into her role as a starter. In past seasons, a key to stopping Phili was to take advantage of that inexperience to get her into foul trouble or defend against her offensive tendencies. But she is improving; during this last offseason, Kyei worked on her weak side (left) layups and now has a more solid game on either side. And going into her fourth year, she has played against the best and that has tempered her game.
Phili is a senior now and has come into her own. For teams without a very talented post player, she is difficult to defend, so you limit the inside points that she is getting – if you can – while focusing on whom among the other four players can hurt you; that is, you have to play very solid defense. Also, she’s not the only inside player that you have to contend with. Whether she is being an inside presence or giving Phili some rest, 6-4 Jr. Amina Muhammed is also a player that you can’t ignore.
Ben Lonergan/The Register-Guard / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images
LGHL: For folks who have never watched the Ducks play, describe their play.
ATQ: All of Graves’ teams have played with a defense-first mentality, and this year’s Ducks are no different. Oregon will use their size to get an advantage in points in the paint. They will play fast defensively and look for deflections and turnovers. All of the players get into it as well – against Penn State on Thursday, the Ducks had four blocked shots and none of the blocks came from Phillipina Kyei.
The Ducks are solid shooters, but not necessarily at distance. Their 3-point shooting can be hot and cold; but when playing against them, opposing teams aren’t exactly going to agonize over stopping the long ball. That said, Oregon is effective at getting their 2-point buckets to go in, so opponents have to be on their game defensively.
The #9 Buckeyes are good again this year, but the meat of their schedule is ahead of them. I think that Oregon will give them a solid game, but I don’t see the Ducks winning this one. If, however, Oregon pulls off an upset, that doesn’t strike me as being against an overrated Ohio State team. I don’t think the Buckeyes are overrated at all. Rather, I would think that perhaps Oregon is being underrated.
LGHL: Where do you see the Ducks landing in the conference standings at the end of the season? Does Graves get this current squad into the NCAA Tournament and win a game or two?
ATQ: ATQ did a poll earlier this week where we polled where readers though that MBB and WBB would land: (https://www.addictedtoquack.com/basketball/2025/1/7/24337938/poll-what-do-you-expect-from-oregon-ducks-basketball-mens-womens).
My vote was for an NCAA tournament bid. It’s still early in the conference portion of the season, and for me personally, the Ducks don’t warrant any projection beyond that.
I have projected Oregon to place somewhere in the middle of the standings. How middle is middle has yet to be played out – what I see is three teams that are solidly on top (UCLA, USC, Ohio State), three or four teams that are solidly on bottom (Northwestern, Rutgers, Purdue, maybe Penn State), and then the rest of the conference is going to slug it out and we’ll see who the best of the rest is. All of these matches are compelling and I’m looking forward to watching all this great Big Ten women’s basketball.