Sabrina Ionescu's Ducks never got closure, but their memory should be enough
Sabrina Ionescu's Ducks never got closure, but their memory should be enough
On Caitlin, Sabrina and dealing with the FOMO of the 2020 Oregon Ducks.
I’ve been starstruck twice in my professional career.
The first time came in 2010. During my Oregonian internship, Aaron Fentress took 20-year-old Tyson up to Seattle to write a few stories on the Mariners. The Yankees were in town and Fentress ventured over to the New York clubhouse to write a piece on Alex Rodriguez closing in on his 600th career home run. In much less pressing news, I went into the Seattle clubhouse to write this piece on slugger Russell Branyan, which included an interview with Mariners catcher Rob Johnson who insisted, no, no, now was the perfect time to do the interview as he sat on a stool only in a jock strap.
That’s not the starstruck moment — this is just cheaper than therapy.
Leaving that clubhouse in a daze, I walked back to the elevator that went up to the press box. When I looked up as the doors closed, to my right…
“Holy shit,” I thought. “That’s Reggie Jackson.”
The second time came a decade later, this time as a far more seasoned reporter, but also involving an elevator.
Hand up: I saw Sabrina Ionescu play basketball twice at Oregon. One of the best college basketball careers ever happened right in Eugene and I barely bothered to watch.
It wasn’t my job at The Athletic. I live in Portland. I…yeah. I got nothing. It’s a regret.
However, the first game I did see was a doozy — No. 3 Stanford at No. 6 Oregon, which the Ducks won by 32. I wrote as the clock wound down in January of 2020:
Ionescu was on the bench. She had created this win with a jolt of energy after a slow Oregon start, scoring with an array of 3s, runners, floaters, baseline drives and the occasional bank off the glass. Her midranger with 47 seconds left in the third set Oregon’s all-time record for points. Her buzzer-beating 3 at the end of the third only padded her lead.
And here she was in the dying minutes of an eventual 87-55 win leaping out of her chair and pointing straight at teammate Holly Winterburn when the freshman guard snagged a steal in the paint.
Happy? Satisfied?
Try angry.
“We wanted to extend that lead and keep playing mad,” said Ionescu, who finished the game with a career-high 37 points and 2,265 career points. “We played mad all the way until the end. The bench came in and gave us a huge lift.”
By then, this was just another night of work for Ionescu. But it was the first time I saw it in person, and after interviews were over and I filed my story and I hustled to the elevator, the only other person in the car for the longest one-story trip up was…
“Holy shit,” I thought. “That’s Sabrina Ionescu.”
I think I mustered a, “Good game.”
Mr. October. Ms. March. The air felt the same.
I use this long-winded wind-up as a way of trying to tell Oregon fans that I empathize with how you’ve felt these last two weeks as Caitlin Clark and Iowa became what the pandemic prevented Ionescu and Oregon from being in 2020.