In April the Oregon Ducks decided to go in a new direction for their Women’s Basketball program. Now that’s a cliché that is used often, however in this case it was a really new direction. Former Oregon All American and Head Coach of about 8 years, Bev Smith, was replaced by the inventor of run and gun basketball, 70 year old Paul Westhead.
Westhead has a long 39 year resume. He has an NBA Championship with the Kareem Abdul-Jabaar, Magic Johnson Lakers and a WNBA Championship in 2007 with the Diana Taurasi Phoenix Mercury. In the mid to late 80’s, Westhead coached Loyola Marymount of LA to the Elite 8 in Men’s College Basketball, and owns a .561 winning percentage over 18 years of D1 Men’s Basketball.
Still this is a head shaker for a team that was the slowest in the Pac 10 last season, won’t be much quicker this year, and as mentioned Westhead is already 70. Well, it’s that new direction.
However Westhead did hire a decent coaching staff. He lured Don Muscatell from Sacramento State back to Oregon. Muscatell was an Assistant coach at Oregon before leaving for Sac State after the 2003 season. Now lure may be strong word, as Muscatell averaged 6 wins a year in his six seasons at Sac State. However he is from the Northwest and may be a key to recruiting in the Oregon, Washington and Idaho states, something that Bev could not do.
Keila Whittingham comes to the Ducks from Marist College, a team that went 61-7 in her two seasons there, and 2 NCAA appearances including one we loved at Stanford. Keila also spent six seasons at Penn State.
Kai Felton joins the staff after five seasons at USC, where she helped recruit seven McDonalds All Americans.
In my opinion the biggest downfall of the Bev Smith regime, was the inability to recruit ranked West Coast women into the program.The rosters have been full of women from Australia, New Zealand and Canada, but usually few top players from the West, and seldom getting a Top 100 American player. I expect this to all change under Westhead.
That change in recruiting will help his fun and gun style of play. At Loyola Marymount it was gun and little defense, we’ll have to see how Westhead defines it in his first time coaching Women’s College Basketball. A note, scores of Westhead’s teams at Loyola Marymount were often in the 140-125 range.
The Ducks return 9 players from last season and have added three recruits, two of whom are JC transfers. Their top players were guards, Taylor Lilly and Micaela Cocks who had trouble at times getting shots off in the slow down offense of 2008-09. However with the run and gun they could well have many open looks per game. Oregon’s ability to run will depend on rebounding however, and that doesn’t look promising at this point. However a whole new style may change that.
Smith had only one recruit in the November signing period, but Westhead and staff found two JC transfers who may help. Kristi Fallin hit on an amazing 118 three pointers last season, 45% from three. Candyce Flynn is a 5-6 Point Guard who scored 14 points and had 5 assists per game last year at an Illinois JC. She played at Morehead State as a frosh.
It’ll be an interesting year in Eugene, at least some excitement for their excellent fan base. However it’ll take Westhead and Staff several years to challenge for the upper half of the Pac 10. There are some very good recruits in the Northwest this year. We’ll see how the Duck recruiting goes between now and November Letter of Intent Day.
