Basketball is all about Match ups and Timing. To start with Miss State presents match up problems to a lot of teams. Add the fact that both VV and McGowan had career games ( timing ) made it probable that Miss St. would win this game. I would caution people from reading too much into a single game. Basketball is an " one any given day sport". Still with the proper defensive adjustments Oregon might have done much better. Graves did not make all the adjustments available to him.
For one thing he is an offensively minded coach who just likes to outscore his opponents. With McCowan and VV having career games that was improbable. The big blond gal you are referring to is Mark McGuires niece, Molly McGuire. Graves likes he because she can shoot from the outside. She is not the best defender Graves can put on the floor. This night he should have focused on defending McCowan. He still had the 6'6" Giomi red shirt freshman that might well have done a better job on McCowan. He does not play her a lot because she is not that good offensively, but just from my observation she appears to be relatively good on defense. She is one of the faster players on the team and covers a lot of ground. She also likes to put a body on the person she is defending. With her speed and height I am sure she would have been a better match up against McCowan defensively. She didn't really need to do that much except block out and keep McCowan off the offensive boards. McCowan just when over the other players who attenpted to block out. Giomi at 6'6" probably would have been successful doing that. But Graves wants offense and in this game it killed him. Both Hebard and McGuire seemed to not want to be that physical with McCowan probably to avoid fouling out. Giomi could have used 5 fouls on her to take her out of her rhythm.
Another mistake he made in this game is not bringing in Sabbaly ( the versatile 6"4" freshman) earlier. As I stated before McGuire is not that quick and is not that good defensively because of that. Sabbally is a very good defender, plus she is the one person that could drive the lane and score against McCowan. She began to do that far too late in the game. The offense seemed to run much better when she had the ball in her hands. They seemed to press her less because with her height she could just pass over any traps. Once she started driving on McCowan, she got two fouls on two drives on McCowan. He height and quickness makes her able to challenge the much slower McCowan. They didn't give her the call on her last drive, even though she was knocked to the floor by some serious body contact from McCowan. They could have used her earlier to get McCowan in foul trouble. It was also suggested that the other Oregon players drive into her instead of trying to avoid her because she usually stayed in the "charge free" protected area under the basket.
All in all there were a lot of adjustments that could have been made to make that difficult match up more manageable. But then again Graves is still experimenting and attempting to integrate his new players into last season lineup.
Having watched Oregon all this season (and last) I agree with almost all of this post--and especially the last paragraph. But I don't think Giomi would have been much of an answer for McCowan. Giomi does move very well but, at this point, she is not very strong and gets banged around and pushed every which way by players big and small when she's on the court--usually during the last minutes of a blowout. I do think she has potential and perhaps a couple of years from now she'll be a very different player, but not before she adds a considerable amount of strength.
I also don't think that Graves is quite as uninterested in defense as you state. This is a very young team--still--(the three best players are 2 sophomores [Ionescu and Hebard] and a freshman [Sabally], with the leadership mainly coming from the first), and they obviously have a lot to learn about positioning, etc. As effective as she has been in all but a few games, Hebard is still very raw in many ways and even considered redshirting her freshman year (the high school competition in Alaska can't be all that much for someone with her size and athletic ability). She works hard and she'll get better at both ends of the court, but at present she is very much a work in progress--albeit a very good one. And McGuire, as has been pointed out, is slow and that leads to a lot of fouls. So, yes, there's hesitancy there (and with Hebard, too) as regards being physical. She's a very good shooter from the top of the key and that does stake some pressure off Hebard, but, in McGuire's case, the pluses and minuses mostly (imo) cancel one another out.
Sabally is another story completely, but she is still learning how to adjust to the US game. So far she's done a terrific job in that regard (early on it seems like she was being called for traveling about every other possession). She's very athletic--kind of glides down the court effortlessly--and is a significant talent with (already) an impressive range of skills (handling the ball, driving, shooting 3's, etc.). But right now defense isn't one of them. I have no doubt the defense will come given her smarts and work ethic, but that's likely somewhere down the road. The Mississippi State game was a good learning experience--a top 5 team on the road after a 3000 mile plane flight--and I have no doubt the Ducks will benefit from it. And although I think they'll always have difficulty with really athletic and quick teams, I do think that by the end of the season, and on a neutral court, they would be able to give M. State a much better challenge than they did on Wednesday.
