The Duck women's basketball team opened up the 2009-10 season with an easy 86-48 victory over Eastern Washington Monday night at Mac Court in front of 2,250 faithful.
Thanks to Taylor Lilley's 28 points and a suffocating defense, Paul Westhead's coaching debut at Oregon was a successful one.
Nicole Canepa scored 17 points and grabbed 10 rebounds and Micaela Cocks added 14 points and four assists. Lindsey Saffold almost got into double figures with eight points.
Julie Piper was the only Eagle to score into double figures with 10 points.
The Ducks pressure defense caused Eastern Washington to shoot just 29.2 percent on 19-for-65 from the field. Meanwhile Oregon shot 40.6 percent on 26-for-64 from the field. The Ducks made hay from the free throw line shooting 26-for-36 from the charity stripe.
"Usually the first game shows things we need to work on," Westhead said. "It reveals to the players what more we need to do."
Oregon jumped on the Eagles right away as Lilley hit two of her seven three-pointers in the first minute of the game. The Ducks took a quick 9-2 lead and never looked back. The closest the Eagles could get was 16-10 at the 12:21 mark. But then the Ducks increased the defensive pressure to create turnovers and easy shots. Oregon took a 45-27 halftime lead.
The second half started out slow offensively for both teams, but Oregon gradually increased their lead throughout the final 20 minutes. There was a span of 46 seconds where Lilley canned three of her treys on the evening. Her final three-pointer gave Oregon a 78-41 lead with 4:33 left.
Canepa scored most of her points in the second half as she used her height advantage to either get lay-ups or get fouled doing so.
"We have not had that feeling in a while," Canepa said of the margin of victory. "We did not do our best out there, we know that. Tonight was OK, but we can do much better. We had a fun time."
Oregon hopes to continue to have a fun time Sunday when it travels to Montana to take on the Grizzlies. The Ducks' next home game is two days later on the 24th when Santa Clara comes calling.
