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1939 Ducks Basketball Champs
In 1939, the Oregon Ducks became the first team to win the NCAA Basketball Championship. Sports editor L. H. Gregory coined the phrase “Tall Firs” to describe the Oregon players due to their taller stature compared to other teams in the country. The season started with a long trip to the east coast for a series of games, ending with a loss to Stanford back west in San Francisco. The Ducks went 6–3 during that trip but gained valuable experience for the remainder of the season. Oregon went 14–2 to claim the North Division title in the Pacific Coast Conference, which set off a best-of-three playoff against the California Golden Bears. The Ducks won two games straight to claim the conference title.
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Oregon Ducks Sabrina Ionescu
In the second game of her senior season on November 13, 2019, Ionescu surpassed the 2,000 points, 800 assists mark for her college career with a 109–52 win over Utah State. She fell short of another triple-double with 16 points, 12 assists, and 9 rebounds in the game but recorded her 2,012 career points and 810 career assists. In a win over then #3 Stanford (87–55), Ionescu scored a career-high 37 points along with 11 rebounds and 7 assists and broke Alison Lang’s Oregon all-time career scoring record of 2,252 points in the third quarter. In the rivalry game against Oregon State on January 24, 2020, Ionescu had 24 points, 9 assists, and 4 rebounds and broke Oregon State and NBA star Gary Payton’s Pac-12 all-time record of 938 assists. Payton personally congratulated Ionescu on the achievement. On February 14, 2020, Ionescu recorded her 1,000th career assist in a game against #7 UCLA and joined Courtney Vandersloot as the only player in NCAA men’s and women’s basketball history with 2,000 plus points and 1,000 plus assists. Ten days later in the Ducks’ 74–66 win at #4 Stanford, she became the first NCAA player ever with 2,000 points, 1,000 assists, and 1,000 rebounds in a career. Ionescu also recorded her eighth triple-double of the season, tying her own NCAA single-season record from last season. Earlier that day, she had been a featured speaker at the memorial service for Kobe Bryant, who had become a close personal friend within the previous two years, flying from Los Angeles to the Bay Area immediately after her speech.
On April 14, 2020, Ionescu was named the winner of the Honda Sports Award as the best collegiate female basketball player in the nation.
The Oregon Ducks are the intercollegiate athletic teams that represent the University of Oregon, located in Eugene. The Ducks compete at the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I level as a member of the Pac-12 Conference. With eighteen varsity teams, Oregon is best known for its American football team and track and field program, which has helped Eugene gain a reputation as “Track Town, USA”. Oregon’s main rivalries are with the Oregon State Beavers (the Civil War) and the Washington Huskies, though they also have a major rivalry with the Washington State Cougars.
College Sports Established
1915
Location
Eugene, Oregon
College Name
University of Oregon
Collegiate History
1973 – Present / NCAA Division 1
1915 – 1973 / University Division of the NCAA
Conference History
2010 – Present / PAC -12 Conference
1978 – 2010 / Pacific 10
1964 – 1978 / Pacific 8
1915 – 1959 / Pacific Coast Conference
Nickname
Ducks – Oregon teams were originally known as Webfoots, possibly as early as the 1890s. The Webfoots name originally applied to a group of fishermen from the coast of Massachusetts who had been heroes during the American Revolutionary War; their descendants had settled in Oregon’s Willamette Valley in the 19th century and the name stayed with them. A naming contest in 1926 won by Oregonian sports editor L. H. Gregory made the Webfoots name official, and a subsequent student vote in 1932 affirmed the nickname, chosen over other suggested nicknames such as Pioneers, Trappers, Lumberjacks, Wolves, and Yellow Jackets.
Ducks, with their webbed feet, began to be associated with the team in the 1920s, and live duck mascots were adopted to represent the team. Journalists, especially headline writers, also adopted the shorter Duck nickname, but it wasn’t until the 1940s that the image of Donald Duck, permitted via a handshake deal between Walt Disney and Oregon athletic director Leo Harris, cemented the image of the Duck as the school’s mascot. Both nicknames were still in use well into the 1970s.
NCAA Championships
Baseball 0
Men’s Basketball 1
1939
Women’s Basketball 0
Football 0
Soccer 0
