Evanston, Ill. — The outcome of the game was no longer in doubt. The Oregon Ducks were on the doorstep of their first Big Ten win. But Kelly Graves’ bench was still locked into the action.
As Graves put some of his bench players into a game that the Ducks wound up winning 85-65 over Northwestern on New Year’s Eve, he noticed something.
“Somebody made a basket, I looked down, every single player was up and cheering for them,” Graves told The Next postgame. “You don’t always see that.”
For someone in his 36th year of college coaching, few have more authority to say that than Graves. But with this group in 2024-25, that camaraderie was far from a foregone conclusion.
Oregon finished last year 11-21. It was the worst season in Graves’ decade-long tenure in Eugene and the second-worst season of his head coaching career that’s included stops at St. Mary’s and Gonzaga.
This offseason, he ventured into new territory: the transfer portal. As he joked at Big Ten Media Day in October, his program had given quite a bit to the portal in recent years, but he hadn’t used it much to add talent to his roster.
“Tradition,” Graves told The Next of why he was hesitant to utilize the portal until this past spring. “I’m an old school coach, and, quite frankly, I thought we could’ve gotten it done with young kids, and we just weren’t able to. The game has changed. You can have some good young players, but you gotta have experience, and we didn’t have that last year.”
This year, Oregon has far more experience and far more depth. Graves added seven transfers, including Deja Kelly from UNC, Amina Muhammad from Texas, Nani Falatea from BYU and Elisa Mevius from Siena.
And while the Ducks’ fortunes this season are still to be determined, they’re already one win shy of matching their win total from all of last season. At 10-4, the team picked up its first-ever Big Ten win against the Wildcats and will host Wisconsin on Saturday.
“We got the right people,” Graves said of the team’s success so far. “And we didn’t promise anything. In fact, I think most of the players that came from mid-majors, we used that: ‘Hey, you’ve been the best player, now come be a piece of something that could be really good.’ And I think we showed tonight that we’ve got the makings of a team that can be pretty good.”
No player’s been more key to Oregon’s turnaround than Deja Kelly, who, after an elite four year career in Chapel Hill, chose to take her talents out west. Her scoring numbers are down — she’s averaging 10.6 points per game after averaging 16.4 points per game over her last three years at UNC — but her rebounding (4.9), assists (3.8) and field goal percentage (38.4%) are all career bests.
“For me, it was all about the next step, that next level and me just focusing on cleaning up some things and continuing to grow and improve in order to try to be a pro,” Kelly told The Next after the win over Northwestern. “I felt like Oregon, [Graves], the system all fit those things that I was looking for.”
Her new coach’s personality has also helped. Graves towers over most people at about 6’6, but his jovial nature puts you at ease.
“He is just so genuine, he’s a true player coach and he also brings so much joy, and I think that’s something I was definitely looking for in my last year, too, because I was trying to find that again,” Kelly said. “Playing for him and showing up every day with the staff, with [my] teammates, just the joy that they bring, that was one of the main reasons that I chose to play here.”
Graves pointed to her stat line against the Wildcats to highlight Kelly’s value. She may have only scored nine points (including the 2,000th of her career), but she had eight assists and zero turnovers.
“Her professionalism, it’s incredible,” Graves said. “All the intangibles, I’ve just been blown away. I know she’s not scoring as many points as she has, but the rest of her game is better than it’s ever been.”
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On-court contributions from Kelly and others are just one piece to Oregon’s renewed success this season. It’s no guarantee that a roster that adds nine new players will start winning games right away.
The fact that this group did validates Graves’ goal: find the right people.
“I came a little later than everyone else because I played for the [German 3×3] national team over the summer, and they’re always super nice,” Elisa Mevius, the Siena transfer, told The Next. “They all took me in immediately, and we have a great team chemistry on the court and off the court. It’s always hard to get to know so many different people, [but] if everyone’s new, that can also be a positive thing because you don’t come into this team that already knows each other perfectly and you’re the only one that stands out. We all had to get to know each other.”
That getting-to-know-you process has had its peaks and valleys on the court. Oregon picked up an early-season win over Baylor, at the time ranked No. 12 in the nation, but lost twice in Hawaii, to strong Georgia Tech and South Dakota State teams. The Ducks also lost at home to USC and on the road to Illinois.
But now they’re in the thick of Big Ten play. After facing the Badgers, they’ll head back on the road to Penn State and then Ohio State — more time together to continue to grow as a group as they hit the most crucial stretch of the year.
“They’re easy to be around. They’re so much fun,” Graves said. “We didn’t recruit knuckleheads. … We were discerning, and it’s paid off, I think.”
