The college basketball season is nearly underway and with that comes some lofty expectations for the men’s and women’s programs at Oregon and Oregon State.
The Oregon men’s basketball team begins the season with an exhibition game against Northwest Christian on Monday. The national media is anticipating that the Ducks will follow up last year’s Pac-12 championship and run to the elite eight with another highly successful season.
Oregon was ranked fifth in the preseason Associated Press poll, released on Monday. This follows Oregon’s No. 5 ranking in the USA Today Coaches Poll and its selection by the media as the preseason favorite to win the Pac-12 Conference title.
The Ducks received one first place vote in the AP top 25. Duke was overwhelmingly selected as the preseason No. 1, garnering 27 of the 32 available first place votes. Rounding out the top five behind the Blue Devils were Kansas, Villanova, Kentucky, and Oregon.
The Oregon State women’s basketball program was co-champions in the Pac-12 last year and made a run to the Final Four in the NCAA tournament, but lost to eventual champion UConn. While the Beavers have made great strides under head coach Scott Rueck, the national media doesn’t see OSU as the strong squad it was last year. The Beavers were ranked 25th in the women’s preseason AP poll, released Tuesday.
The Pac-12 media also picked the Beavers to come back down from last year’s heights. Oregon State was picked fifth in the conference preseason media poll. The Beavers begin the season against Northwest Nazarene on November 5.
The Oregon women’s team, which made a run to the WNIT semifinals a year ago, garnered one vote in the AP top 25. The Ducks were picked to finish 7th in the Pac-12 preseason media poll. Oregon started the season on Saturday with an 89-36 win over Northwest Christian.
