With the way Oregon shot free throws, rebounded and reacted to a press defense down the stretch, you'd have thought the Ducks had been in this situation before.
Which they had. They had just never handled it nearly this well.
Unable to clinch a series of close games over the last month, the Oregon women's basketball team ended that slump against the team that started it. The Ducks stumbled out of halftime but found their footing to take a double-digit lead and outrun UCLA 66-55 before 2,515 in McArthur Court on Saturday.
"We were pretty much in the same situation down in UCLA, and we let that slip away," UO guard Taylor Lilley said, recalling the 14-point lead Oregon squandered in the second half at Pauley Pavilion one month ago today, the first of seven straight UO losses. "We remembered what that felt like, and we just did not want to have that feeling again. We just were not going to let this one get away from us."
Nothing short of a miraculous run to a Pac-10 tournament title will make up for the disappointments of this season for the Ducks (12-16, 6-11 Pac-10). But on Saturday they showed they've learned a few things from their mistakes.
Effort has rarely been an issue, and it wasn't against the Bruins (14-13, 9-7) despite Thursday's loss to USC. A couple of demons were exorcised, though, as Oregon pulled out a tight contest with one of the conference's better teams, and did so despite facing fullcourt pressure down the stretch. On the individual front, Kaela Chapdelaine overcame a cold shooting night against the Trojans to score a career-high 25 points Saturday.
"It wasn't a perfect game," Chapdelaine said. "We made mistakes, but we forget them more quickly. We talked about just trying not to get frustrated with those little mistakes, just moving on."
That loose attitude was never more important than after halftime Saturday, as the Bruins mounted a 13-2 run to erase a seven-point deficit. Chapdelaine hit her third three-pointer of the game to end the run, and another soon after to give Oregon the lead for good at 40-39. That sparked a 10-0 run for the Ducks, and after two UCLA free throws Chapdelaine hit yet another three for a nine-point lead.
This wasn't Oregon's first chance to knock off another team from the middle of the Pac-10 this season. They had golden opportunities at UCLA and USC, at Arizona and Arizona State, and at Washington, but made critical mistakes down the stretch. Even their win at Washington State last week included a 13-point lead cut down to one in the final minute.
But this one was different. UCLA managed only six points in the final five minutes, while the Ducks made 9-of-12 free throws in that span to hang on.
"We were just so together the entire time," Lilley said. "There wasn't really any frustration out there. We were letting things happen and having fun."
Lilley, Oregon's leading scorer this season, managed 11 points on 4-of-17 shooting. Apart from Chapdelaine, Oregon's other three veterans guards — Lilley, Tamika Nurse and Micaela Cocks — combined to shoot 5-of-28, and yet the Ducks won convincingly. Credit that to another strong effort by Nicole Canepa, and one of the best games of the season by fellow freshman forward Ellie Manou.
Manou finished with 12 points and eight rebounds, and Canepa added seven points and 10 boards. Seven of Canepa's rebounds and five of Manou's were on the defensive end.
"You can see their defensive toughness finally coming through, their defensive boarding finally coming through," UO coach Bev Smith said. "They both almost got a double-double, and so we just have to keep building on that."
Chapdelaine's final three-pointer made it 53-45, and came just after the Bruins began pressing with about seven minutes left.
The press was Oregon's undoing the last time these two met, but just as they did a week earlier at Washington and Thursday against USC, the Ducks easily handled it by passing over the top to post players.
"We were waiting for it," Smith said. "We were definitely waiting for it. There was some, it wasn't anxiety, it was, when are you going to put it on? Because we're ready. We want to get this done and we want to get it over with."
Said UCLA coach Kathy Olivier: "The first time around we were very active and they definitely struggled against it, so we knew they'd work on it. We were hoping that we didn't have to go that direction. But they were hitting their threes. I thought they had a good outside-inside attack, and that's what made them successful."