Oregon Ducks News: Romero named top amateur, color confusion, Liberty fall by 6

Ducks' Kiara Romero honored as top women's amateur in the world

After reaching the quarterfinals of the U.S. Women's Amateur and setting a record for the lowest final round by an amateur at the U.S. Women's Open, Oregon golfer Kiara Romero won the Mark H. McCormack medal as the top female amateur golfer in the world.

England's Charlotte "Lottie" Woad won the award last year, based on points in the world rankings. In her sophomore season at UO Romero won medalist honors at the Big Ten tournament and the Gold Canyon NCAA Regional.

In a press release Romero said, “It’s an incredible honor to win the McCormack Medal. This is a really nice reminder of how far I’ve already come in my golf career. I know how special winning this medal is, and I hope I can follow in the footsteps of the inspiring players who have won it before me.”

Though a lucrative pro career awaits she's returning to the Ducks for her junior season, coached by Derek Radley, her caddy for the U.S. Women's Open.

Color rush to confusion: Ducks declare stripe out for 2026 opener

Oregon fans are already slated to wear tie dye for the home game against Wisconsin and black for Oregon State and USC but things might get really weird for the home opener, scheduled to be a stripe out by sections.

The plan is for even sections to wear yellow, odd sections to wear green, the reverse of 2023. The band and the students in sections 1-9 will be a solid mass of green, or whatever color tank top or onesie those unruly undergrads decide to pull off their dorm room floor.

Conveniently, Oregon's color chart on their Facebook page includes a link to the goducks.com apparel shop, which is the point of this heavily-regimented madness after all. It looks awesome on TV, however, if a notoriously iconoclastic fanbase can pull it off.

Liberty crap out in Vegas, lose to Aces 83-77

Back-to-back games on a road trip remain one of the toughest challenges in sports, outside of Joey Chestnut eating 76 hotdogs in 10 minutes. In basketball it's particularly hard to swallow when the second game is in Las Vegas.

Though they normally wake up in a town that never sleeps, Sabrina Ionescu and the New York Liberty fell to the Las Vegas Aces Wednesday night after beating the Los Angeles Sparks the night before.

The defending champs ran out of gas in the fourth quarter, outscored 22-14. Center Emma Meesseman of Belgium continued her stellar rookie season with 24 points and 10 rebounds, but the defending champs couldn't counter Aces pivot star A'ja Wilson, who put up 17 points and 16 rebounds.

The home squad also got five 3-pointers and 21 points from Jewell Lloyd off the bench. Duck great Sabrina Ionescu connected for 18 points but was uncharacteristically quiet running the floor, just one rebound and one assist.

The three-game road swing concludes with a Saturday game at league-leading Minnesota, an 11 a.m. tipoff on CBS.

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