Sports Editor:
Adam Jude
adamjude@dailyemerald.com
Assistant Sports Editor:
Jeff Smith
jeffsmith@dailyemerald.com
Thursday, April 4,2002
Oregon Daily Emerald
Best Bet
NBA: L.A. Clippers at Dallas
6 p.m., TNT
Progessing toward
the Future
It may not have been an NCAA Tournament quality season,
but the Ducks still achieved success
By Hank Hager
Oregon Daily Emerald
When Bev Smith took over as the Oregon
women’s basketball coach in June 2001,
words like “pressure” and “healing” were
mentioned at a rate that would make most
basketball players blush.
But now, after 22 wins and a Women’s National In
vitation Tournament championship, there is one
word Smith can use with confidence: “Progress.”
“I think that’s what this year was all about,” she said.
So big deal that the Ducks didn’t make the NCAA
Tournament. Who cares that they finished tied for
sixth in the Pacific-10 Conference?
Smith does, but she understands the importance
of any form of postseason play.
Granted, the NCAA was the desired postseason
destination, and a better finish in regular season play
would have given Oregon a better seed in the confer
ence tournament, but overall, success followed
wherever the Ducks went.
“I’m just now realizing the fact that there are two
teams that end their season with a win,” Smith said
after returning from the women’s NCAA Final
Four in San Antonio.
Many of Smith’s players agreed with that
sentiment.
“At the end of the year, there are only four
national champions,” junior Shaquala
Williams said of both men’s and women’s
tournaments. “Maybe it’s not the Big
Dance, but it’s a start towards what we
want to accomplish next year.”
Four seniors ended their Oregon ca
reers with a WNIT championship. Ed
niesha Curry, who averaged 9.8 points and
3.25 assists per game in her only season as a
Duck, and two-year starter Jamie Craighead will
leave the Oregon backcourt.
Turn to Basketball, page 12
After shaky opening for Ducks,
Bev shows she did know best
Adam
Jude
Out in left field
In every sense, it was a sea
son on the brink for the Ore
gon women’s basketball
team. As the season began,
one of the most successful Pacif
ic-10 Conference programs of the
last decade suddenly found itself
in unknown territory, a black
hole with no foreseeable ending.
Ha.
After a couple wrong turns,
first-year head coach Bev Smith
found the right road... which
led to a national championship.
There were some early skep
tics — those long-time Oregon women’s basketball
supporters who thought Bev would never fill Jody
Runge’s giant high heels.
Ha.
Many thought the women’s program would take
years to recover from its brutal divorce with Runge,
the former head coach who led the Ducks to eight
consecutive NCAA Tournament appearances.
Ha. Bev needed just 10 months.
It’s easy to picture Runge, nestled in her Victori
an-style Portland home, collecting her half-million
dollar settlement from the University, chuckling at
the mediocrity of Smith’s squad early in the season
Turn to Jude,page 12
Alyssa
Fredrick (31)
and Amy
Taylor
celebrate the
Ducks’WNIT
victory over
Houston on
March 27
at Mac
Court.
€.>§** v 'c*OV
rnuiu musiranun uy i nomas ranerson tmeraia
Oregon track teams head to Texas Relays with emphasis on field
MEN’S: The men enter only field athletes
into this weekend’s Texas Relays meet
—the runners stay home
By Peter Hockaday
Oregon Daily Emerald
For the Oregon men’s track and field team,
most of the attention in recent weeks has
been focused on the track.
Now it shifts to the field.
Eleven Duck athletes from the team’s field
contingent will compete in five events over
three days this weekend at the Texas Relays
in Austin, Texas. Adam Kriz, who will shoot
for a Pacific-10 Conference championship
qualifying distance in the hammer throw, is
Oregon’s only entrant today.
But on Friday, the Ducks will hit the Texas
track in full force. Foluso Akinradewo will
try to extend his Pac-10 distance in the triple
jump into an NCAA distance, Trevor Woods
will try to move from the NCAA’s provision
al list onto the automatic list in the pole
vault, and John Stiegeler — currently lead
ing the nation in the javelin — will lead a
•strongOregon contingent in that event.
Though the season is young, Stiegeler ap
pears ready to continue his dominance in
the javelin that started with his school
record heave of 252 feet, 10 inches to win
the NCAA championship last season.
Stiegeler threw 247 feet at this year’s first
outdoor meet.
On Saturday, Jason Boness will lead a
trio of Oregon jumpers who have notched
Pac-10 heights.
The Texas meet is the
fifth outdoor meet of the
season for the Ducks.
Through four previous
meets, Oregon boasts
three NCAA automatic
qualifiers, one NCAA pro
visional qualifier and 23 Pac-10 qualifiers.
In last weekend’s action, the Ducks got
NCAA-qualifving times from Jason Hart
mann in the 10,000-meter race and Simon
Kimata in the 800.
“It's good to get the qualifying time un
der your belt, so you can get some confi
dence and focus on the rest of the season,”
Hartmann said.
Turn tp Mens track page 4A'
WOMEN’S: The women’s track team
returns to the site of its first national
championship in 1985
By Hank Hager
Oregon Daily Emerald
In 1985, the Oregon women’s track and
field team took its first ever NCAA champi
onship, then held in Austin, Texas.
Seventeen years have passed since the
Duck women last saw success in the south
ern city. In fact, in the 74 previous years of
the Clyde Littlefield Texas Relays, no Ore
gon woman has participated in the event.
Until this year.
Mary Etter’s turn in the hammer throw,
scheduled for 2 p.m. today at Mike A. Myers
Stadium, marks the return of the Oregon
women to their former glory.
After two successive outdoor weeks, Texas
becomes an important stepping ground.
“We need a big meet,” head coach Tom
Heinonen said. “Our athletes need to train
| and compete in a really tough environment
and see how they handle that.” .
XP&lAtfcs from across the country
competing in the four-day event, it will be an
intense and complex competition for the
Oregon athletes. No Ducks participated
Wednesday, the first day of the Relays, but
spectators will see a bevy of Oregon women
until the meet’s completion on Saturday.
The Ducks have yet to see an outdoor event
that has lasted for more than one day, some
thing that Heinonen welcomes until open arms.
“It’s valuable for our
team to be at a multiple
day meet because the Pac
10s are two days,” he said,
l||s referring to the conference
championships in Pull
man, Wash., in May.
In addition, the meet
will provide the Duck women an opportuni
ty to gain higher marks in a more competi
tive field, essentially sizing themselves up to
the rest of the country. Plus, it may relieve
them from the monotony of a one-day event.
“It’s really a unique opportunity," Heinonen
said. “It’s a break from the routine."
Etter and junior Jordan Sauvage will start off
tiie day for Oregon in a field of 23 in the event.