State of the Hardwood: Kelly Graves built a roster. Can he coach the Oregon women back to their standard?

“People quickly forget,” Kelly Graves says, “we're the ones that set the bar here.”

Welcome to The I-5 Corridor’s State of the Hardwood series, where we’ll be taking an in-depth look at the men’s and women’s basketball programs at Oregon and Oregon State throughout the summer. Today we begin with the Oregon women’s basketball team, which has gone through a drastic rebuild this spring as the team attempts to pull out of a nose dive.

EUGENE — Kelly Graves would like you to remember how we got here.

That dreadful 11-21 season this winter? He didn’t like it any more than you did. It’s also an acute outlier that has earned such a distinction because of the belief Graves has cultivated — and expectations he’s constructed — around Eugene over the last decade.

“People quickly forget,” he told the I-5 Corridor last week, “we're the ones that set the bar here.”