Canzano: Kelly Graves sounds off on Oregon women's basketball defections

Three sophomores entered the transfer portal.

Maddie Scherr was a McDonald’s All-American as a high school player.

Oregon Ducks women’s basketball coach Kelly Graves joined me on the statewide radio show on Friday. The Ducks lost three sophomores — guards Maddie Scherr and Sydney Parrish and forward Kylee Watson — to the transfer portal earlier this week.

What’s happening?

"Some coaches don't even worry about it... I'm just not that way,” Graves said. “I'm a touchy feely person so when it doesn't go well it hurts me personally.”

Graves said he met individually with all of his players at the end of the season. He said: "I think the program's fine. It's one of the things that happens nowadays. In this case, they all had different reasons. I don't think there's anything that's stinking within the program.

“All you can do as a coach is treat your players right."

Some of this is reflective of the times, isn’t is? College players have the transfer portal available to them and they’re utilizing it. Some of it, though, feels like an extension of the youth sports and club sports mentality.

“Kids are looking for what they can get now,” Graves said. “If it isn’t completely fulfilling for them they seem to think the grass is always greener and they pack up and go.”

I asked Graves if he’d turn to the transfer portal to replace the minutes lost by those three transfers and the decision by junior Nyara Sabally to declare for the WNBA Draft.

He said: “I like what I got. I really do. I think we’re set at every position and I like my class that is coming in.”

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