Oregon women's basketball weekend recap: Rumbling against ranked adversaries

The Oregon women had quite the weekend ahead of them as the Ducks faced No. 16 Utah on Friday and No. 3 Colorado on Sunday.

Even at home, the Ducks were underdogs playing against the Utes. However, they were able to pull out some massive defensive strongholds and put up the necessary points to lead at half.

After two quarters of play, Oregon was leading Utah 29-21. The Utes must have had quite the pep talk during halftime from head coach Lynne Roberts as they came storming into the lead in the third quarter.

Utah scored 22 points, more than doubling their halftime score, and held the Ducks to an abysmal 7 points in the third.

While Oregon was able to put up 12 points in the fourth quarter, the team fell short of keeping the Utes at bay.

Despite Phillipina Kyei scoring 19 points and Chance Gray earning 18 points of her own, Oregon lost by 10, falling to an 11-1 overall record.

Utah, walking away with a 58-48 victory, moved to 15-5 overall (5-3 in the Pac-12).

Up next, the Oregon women had an even bigger fish to fry… or Buffalo to beat, that is.

The No. 3 Colorado Buffaloes came to Eugene just one game back from the Stanford Cardinal, who leads the conference standings.

The Ducks hung with the top-5 squad for almost an entire quarter. Trailing by just 5 points at the end of the first, Oregon looked like they were going to prevent a complete blowout.

However, in the second quarter, as Grace VanSlooten’s scoring slowed down, Colorado blew open their lead. The Buffs more than doubled their score before the halftime buzzer rang and headed to the locker room with a 31-11 lead over the Ducks.

Oregon scored just 3 points in the second quarter and was shooting a deplorable 17.4 percent from the field.

While Oregon scored the first bucket of the second half, Colorado continued to dominate the court. Despite the Ducks nearly doubling their first-half points in just one quarter, the Buffs maintained a healthy lead of 19 points.

With just 10 minutes remaining in the game, it was crunch time for the Ducks and they were able to bring the score differential within 7 but they didn’t have enough gas left in the tank.

Oregon pulled out 37 points in the second half but their scoring improvements didn’t quite keep pace with what Colorado was able to produce throughout the entirety of the game.

Even Kyei's double-double wasn't enough to bring the Ducks back within reaching distance of the victory.

The Buffaloes finished the game with a 61-48 lead over the Ducks and returned to their winning ways in conference games.

Dropping two games in a row never sits quite right with a team. Losing four in a row is just embarrassing. Oregon now sits in last place in the Pac-12 standings with a 2-7 record in conference games.

Head coach Kelly Graves and staff will have to work intensely with their players to prepare to bounce back from this unimaginable losing streak.

Read more: