Oregon women’s basketball picks up first Pac-12 win against Arizona State Sun Devils

In its first home basketball game at Matthew Knight Arena in nearly a month, the Oregon women's basketball team got its first victory in Pac-12 play against Arizona State Friday, 65-53.

The Ducks (10-7, 1-3 Pac-12) crushed the Sun Devils on the glass, 48-27, and held them to just 34.5% shooting in the second half to cruise to an easy win. Oregon outscored ASU, 34-20, in the paint, and felt like it left points on the board.

“We know that it could’ve been more than 34-20 in the paint,” Oregon coach Kelly Graves said. “We have to continue to work on that and focus. I felt we had a real advantage there, they really didn’t have a shot blocker and at times played four guards and sometimes even five, actually.”

Chance Gray led the Ducks with a game-high 22 points, and Grace VanSlooten and Phillipina Kyei each logged double-doubles, with VanSlooten scoring 19 points with 11 boards and Kyei scoring 14 points with 14 more rebounds.

Ducks make improvements on defense

After getting crushed on the glass against No. 2 UCLA last week, and giving up 21 offensive rebounds, the emphasis this week was on crashing the defensive glass. Freshman guard Sofia Bell was held off the scoreboard but led the team in deflections and hauled in eight rebounds.

“It’s just focusing on really hitting somebody and boxing them out hard and going to get that rebound,” VanSlooten said. “I know we did well on the offensive boards, too, but we’ve been really focusing on the defensive boards.”

Oregon offense hot from the start

Oregon was hot out of the gate, building up a short lead before ASU rattled in a 3-pointer near the end of the quarter to take a two-point lead into the first break. From then on, it was all Ducks. Oregon started the second quarter on a 10-3 run and built up a four-point lead at half, and then scored the first seven points of the third quarter to take a double-digit lead just four minutes into the frame.

The third quarter helped the Ducks separate, outscoring ASU 16-6.

“I thought Kennedy (Basham) got us started right, she challenged some shots, we gave them some trouble with our size in that quarter,” Graves said. “Defensively we were on point all night. Sofia (Bell), I give her a lot of credit too, she got a hand on a lot of balls … we were able to get out and got some easy baskets in transition as well. I think our size hurt them late in that second half with shots around the rim.”

The Ducks will get a day’s rest before taking on the Arizona Wildcats at noon Sunday back at Matthew Knight Arena.

Alec Dietz covers University of Oregon football, volleyball, women’s basketball and baseball for The Register-Guard. You may reach him at adietz@registerguard.com and you can follow him on Twitter @AlecDietz.

This article originally appeared on Register-Guard: Pac-12 women's basketball: Oregon gets first conference win against ASU