Tonight at 8:00 PM PT, the Oregon Ducks women’s basketball team will travel to Pullman, Washington to face off against the Washington State Cougars. The Ducks are down to 5-7 in conference play after a 72-69 loss against the Washington Huskies on Thursday, while Wazzu is 4-8 in the conference and are currently riding a three game losing streak. The Cougars are one of the worst three teams in the conference and lost 51-39 against Oregon State on Thursday, in one of the worst offensive performances possible. Yes, Wazzu somehow managed to average just .54 points per possession. In other words, that’s about 54 points in an NBA game.
Nobody on the Cougars averages double-digit points per game, and their team leader is guard Jazmine Perkins (9.2 PPG). She is just as likely to turn the ball over as she is to dish out an assist, but she is a terrific defensive player who averages 7.3 rebounds per game and 2.8 steals per game.
Without Ireti Amojo, Washington State does not have another player who can put up nine points each night. In their last game, however, Sage Romberg came up with 11 points (4-12, 1-6 from three). As the stats indicate, she is an inefficient player and not a reliable scoring option in the least. She only connects on about a third of her total shooting attempts, and she averages exactly seven points per game due to her ambitiousness as a shooter. Romberg is second on the team with 8.2 attempted field goals per game, and her below-average 6.7 EFF per game illustrates her inefficient ways.
Aside from Perkins, center Carly Noyes is the team’s best scoring option. Although she was blanked in her last game and missed all of her six shots in 15 minutes of play, Noyes is second on the team with 7.2 points per game and leads the team with a 49.7 FG%. That number is definitely inflated, because Noyes is a center who has never attempted a three-pointer this season. This means her eFG% is the exact same as her FG%, and that doesn’t look good on the stat sheet. Despite the fact that she only attempts shots from close, Noyes helps her team out. However, she averages just three rebounds per game and is an awful free throw shooter. Still, Noyes is a better player than Romberg with a 7.4 EFF per game.
The Oregon Ducks will dominate the boards tonight, because they have four players who average over five rebounds per game. One of them, Amanda Johnson (of course), corrals double-digit rebounds every night. Expect another double-double from her, because she averages 20 points per game and will be unstoppable (23.1 EFF per game).
Jasmin Holliday is another Ducks star who is poised for a huge night, because she averages 7.3 rebounds per game, a number that only Perkins can match. Both of them have the same names and average the same number of rebounds per game. However, Holliday is even better on defense, because she averages two blocks per game. The Cougars are far worse on the interior defensively and will not be able to match her 14.2 points per game. The Ducks have three players who have more points per game than the Cougars leading scorer.
Pullman is a difficult place to play in, so that must obviously be factored in. This game is filled with obvious facts, because the Oregon Ducks are easily the better team. Expect this to be a 75-62 blowout victory for the Ducks, and this is a merciful projection due to the fact that this game will be played in the Cougs court. The Ducks are looking to bounce back from a disappointing three-point loss against their hated rivals, in a game that went down to the final five seconds. This is the perfect bounce-back game for the Ducks, and they will take full advantage of it.
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