Shoot 25% from the floor and less than 10% from behind the three-point arc, get pounded on the boards by 36 and have six of your players go oh-for a combined 18. Get credit for only four assists and give up 24 second chance points and 52 point in the paint. Then if that's not enough, start the game on the wrong end of a 19-1 scoring run and wait for 9:42 to make your first field goal. One would be hard pressed to find a more certain prescription for disaster.
All of that added up to a 91-56 pasting of Oregon by the Stanford Cardinal Thursday evening at Matthew Knight Arena. They are the fourth ranked team in the nation for a good reason - the Cardinal pushed Oregon all over the front court with height, position and force.
Point guard Nia Jackson was Oregon's only consistent offensive option and the junior led the Ducks with 21 points, the 19th time in her last 20 games she has reached the 20-point benchmark. Junior forward Amanda Johnson was the only other Oregon player to reach double figure scoring, adding 15 points.
Stanford's Chiney Ogwumike (18 pts., 12 rebnd) and Kayla Pedersen (11 pts, 14 rebnd) each struck for a double-double, with three other players hitting double digits on the score sheet.
"Wow, this is one of those games I shouldn't look at the stat sheet," said head coach Paul Westhead. "I think our team played better than the statistics will show. Despite the thirty-something (point) loss I thought we played hard. But you can't win if you can't make shots."
"That's a hard one for us because we are an offensive minded, shot making team."
"I thought we defended reasonably well for a good bit of the game."
Well enough that once Oregon did break the lid off the rims, they were able to pull within 10 points of the Cardinal late in the first half.
Only to have Stanford rattle off an 8-2 closing flurry to end the first half, then open the second with a 16-2 haymaker.
"Stanford, they're a very resilient team," said Westhead. "They can play you fast, they can play you slow . we need to be screening inside and getting people coming off screens, making shots and getting to the offensive glass."
"To come out and get jumped on has been a little bit of an issue for us this year," said Johnson. "Just having that stress on our shooters - having one point for as long as we did, I think it was a little bit difficult."
"We have to get defensive boards to be able to run our fast break and I think that was a bit of our problem in the beginning of the game is we were coming down trying to play them in a half court setting . not getting those rebounds kind of stifled everything."
The loss dropped Oregon's record to 3-5 in conference and 12-7 overall.
"Like coach said, I felt that we played hard, played with intensity," said Jackson "This game, I think it showed our team that we have that potential to play well, to play well against really good teams but we just have to keep it going for 40 minutes . I think it in some ways gave us a little bit of confidence because we know what we can do."
The lessons best learned are frequently the least enjoyed and the task at hand now turns to California's 12:30 visit on Saturday.
