Kelly Graves, Oregon reflect on NCAA Tournament cancellation five years later

“That team was loaded,” they said.

Or, “You guys were going to win the whole thing.”

Graves is always appreciative and gracious, but the sting still lives in his head and in his heart.

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On March 8, 2020, in the moments immediately after the Ducks – indeed a loaded team with future WNBA players point guard Sabrina Ionescu, forward Satou Sabally and center Ruthy Hebard as well as a veteran shooter in Erin Boley and USC transfer Minyon Moore – had trounced Stanford 89-56 in the Pac-12 title game in Las Vegas, Graves thought he knew what was next. His team was 31-2, with the generation player on the floor, and viewed as a national title favorite.

“I just know we’re playing. I think we’ll be a No. 1 (seed),” Graves said. “We’re praying for (a regional placement in) Portland. I hope that’s where they put us. I think that would be special. I’ve got a feeling that if they do, we’re going to break some regional attendance records up there.”

Not a single reporter in the postgame interviews asked Graves about the coronavirus or what was happening outside the walls of the arena in the Manadalay Bay Hotel. This one included.

But there was something happening. The casino floor and the restaurants were eerily quiet. There was barely a line to check into the hotel. Hand sanitizer stations had been propped up every few feet. Stanford coach Tara VanDerveer wasn’t shaking hands with opponents, instead she was offering up her elbow.

Every further beyond, the world was starting to swirl in distressing ways. Cruise ships were being held in port with passengers who had the virus that had begun migrating across the globe after originating in China. Tom Hanks, one of the world’s biggest movie stars, had just announced that he and his wife, Rita Wilson, were diagnosed with the virus while in Australia. In the NBA, Utah Jazz star Rudy Gobert had joked with reporters about having the coronavirus in a postgame press conference and rubbed his hands on the microphone.

This reporter approached Graves after the press conference and asked, ‘Do you think there is a chance that they will cancel games?” Graves chuckled nervously.

“I think people are overreacting,” Graves said at the time, sounding more hopeful than sure.

Then-senior Hebard said the players were so wrapped up in anticipation for the tournament that they might have been in a bit of denial about what was happening with the coronavirus.

“I think a lot of times we see things happen in the world and think ‘that won’t ever happen to us’,” Hebard said.

Graves admits he knew there were some big concerns, but he was optimistic that “we were going to figure it out.”

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It had already been an emotional roller coaster of a season. The death of former Lakers superstar Kobe Bryant in January hit the program especially hard. Bryant had visited the team the previous January in the locker room with his daughter Gianna (Gigi), who died with him in the helicopter crash that took the lives of nine people, in tow. Ionescu was close to Bryant and his family. She had helped to coach Gigi’s team. In the days after his death, Ionescu was asked to speak at his nationally televised memorial service and said she was dedicating the rest of the season in the memory of Kobe and Gigi.

She would fly from Los Angeles to the Bay Area that same day to take the court for Oregon’s huge Pac-12 matchup at Stanford. In that game, she became the first player in NCAA history to reach 2,000 points, 1,000 assists and 1,000 rebounds with her 26th career double-double in a Ducks win at Maples Pavilion.

The Ducks channeled their emotions into 19 straight wins heading into the NCAA Tournament, winning those games by an average of 26 points.

Following the Pac-12 tournament, and with another week until the NCAA Selection Show and almost another week after that before games began, the Oregon players and coaches scattered. It was Graves’ practice to give his players a little time off before the NCAA Tournament. It was spring break and many of them headed home for a few days.

Graves headed to Arkansas to recruit and planning to head to Colorado for their high school state tournament.

“I got up that morning and I turned on ESPN and there is Jay Bilas talking about the tournament being canceled,” Graves said.

Graves tweeted: “It appears our ‘unfinished business’ will remain just that. Disappointed, but I completely understand. I love & I hurt for my team.”

He heard the news around the same time as his players. Graves began making phone calls and booking a flight back to Eugene. He sent a group text calling a meeting. Only about half of his players were in the locker room for the meeting that followed.

“Maybe seven out of our 13 players,” Graves said. Campus was also closing at that point, with students being sent home. “For the players I was texting, I told them there was no reason to come back.”
Hebard was away from campus when she got the word.

“I just broke down crying,” Hebard said. “The season was over, yes, but I also wouldn’t be playing another game with the girls that I thought of as my family. I think the most painful part was that we weren’t with each other.”

The team, Graves noted, has never been together as a group since., though individual players have returned to campus. The New York Liberty announced Monday that the team will play a preseason game in Eugene against the Connecticut Sun, bringing Ionescu and Nyara Sabally back to campus. And while that will excite Oregon fans, it’s not quite a reunion.

“My biggest regret is that we didn’t have any closure,” Graves said. “It would be nice to get that group back together, honor them in some way. I’m hoping that can happen.”

Ionescu, Sabally and Hebard, just a few weeks later, were drafted into the WNBA. Ionescu, who swept the national player of the year awards, was the No. 1 pick to New York. Sabally went No. 2 to Dallas, with Hebard going No. 8 to Chicago.

Ionescu has revisited the topic of the past few years, particularly last fall when the Liberty won a WNBA title, giving her the championship she didnt get the opportunity to compete for in college.

She talked about interacting with her pro teammates who had won NCAA championships and feeling the void in those conversations.

Winning a title in New York felt like giving a little piece of that experience back to Oregon, Ionescu said.
“It will never truly fill the void of not being able to win a championship for this university,” Ionescu said. “But understanding the story that I was supposed to tell here but am now telling on the professional level… part of that championship is for the University of Oregon.”

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Hebard, who won her own WNBA title in Chicago in 2021, still can’t help but think about what could have been at Oregon.

“We will never know for sure and not knowing is the hardest part,” Hebard said.

Five years later, Graves admits he isn’t over it.

“I remember talking to (Tara) VanDerveer and her saying, ‘Kelly, that would have changed you and your program. Being a national champion changes everything,’” Graves said. “I’m not saying we would have won it. But we certainly had a great shot, right? I don’t think about it every day, but I’m reminded about it enough to know to think about it at times.”

The year before, the Ducks had reached the Final Four and fell in the national semifinals to Baylor. Ionescu was eligible for the WNBA Draft after that season, and her decision to return to Oregon for her final year was largely based on finishing off what the Ducks hadn’t been able to accomplish the previous season.

“You go through the tournament and if you win, it’s amazing and if you lose, you give it a shot and that happens to 63 teams every single year,” Graves said. “But not to have that opportunity…We all thought we were on our way to something special.”

The reverberations have impacted the Oregon program ever since. More than a dozen high-profile player transfers and disappointing seasons have characterized the aftermath of the 2020 cancellation.

The following season, Oregon reached the Sweet 16 in a season that was marred by game cancellations.

The following season, the Ducks exited in the first round.

Oregon hasn’t been back to the NCAA tournament since, posting losing records in the Pac-12 in 2022-23 and 2023-24, a season in which they finished last in the conference race and closed the season with 14 straight losses. It was the worst season in Graves’ coaching career.

This season, with some strong additions from the transfer portal, Oregon’s first in the Big Ten, Oregon went 19-11 and 10-8 and fell in the first round of the Big Ten Tournament on Thursday, and are decidedly on the NCAA bubble.

“We’ve had some highs and some really serious lows since then,” Graves said. “We were at a place (in 2020) where the program was in great shape. We had a lot of talent, and a great recruiting class coming in and I think the COVID season (2020-2021) really set us back. We weren’t able to bond with those players right at a time when we really needed to, we couldn’t do anything with them. And that group ended up falling apart and we still haven’t recovered.

“We are in a better place now, but it’s been tough.”

Five years after the biggest disappointment of his long coaching career, Graves has come to a place of perspective.

“You can’t feel bad though, because how many kids that year didn’t get to win a state championship in their sport, or even finish their high school or college careers,” Graves said. “It didn’t just happen to us. A lot of people didn’t get the opportunity, so it’s hard to say ‘Woe is me’. Because a lot of people were denied.

“But boy, we were going to be hard to beat.”