Arizona women’s coach Niya Butts provided the most telling quote of the season after her team’s 119-112 victory over Oregon on Saturday when she said, “Defensively, we did a really good job.”

Paul Westhead is still full speed ahead at age 70 -- Photo by Doug Beghtel/The Oregonian

We are searching the archives at this very moment trying to find another example of coach who credited her team’s defense after yielding 112 points in a game that did not go into overtime.   We don’t expect to find any.  

We also may not find another school that offers fans a free pizza every time its team scores more than 100 points, a promotion the Ducks are starting in Thursday’s home game against Cal.   Pizza Hut may have to pay up because the Ducks have exceeded the 100-point mark three times this season.

But this is Oregon women’s basketball under Paul Westhead, now 70, who lifted uptempo basketball to a freaky, almost comical, level when he was the men’s coach at Loyola Marymount nearly two decades ago and is doing it again in his first season as the women’s coach at Oregon, which leads the nation in scoring at 87.4 points a game.

No team can adequately prepare for the way Oregon (i.e., Westhead) plays basketball, but that is the challenge facing Cal and Stanford in road games this weekend, with the Bears going up against the Ducks’ whirlwind machine on Thursday, and No. 2 Stanford making the trip to Eugene for an 11 a.m. Saturday game.

“I think it’s fun,” Stanford coach Tara VanDerveer said of the Oregon style.  “I love how they play.”

It is fun to watch.   It’s been said before, but we will say it again – you have to see a Westhead team play to grasp the style, because words don’t paint the picture.

When Westhead was at Loyola Marymount, the Lions, led by Bo Kimble and Hank Gathers, averaged over 100 points in four seasons, and established the current the NCAA record for scoring average with 122.4 points  in 1990.  The Lions once scored 186 points in a game, an NCAA record, and won one game 181-150.

The Westhead style has three basic concepts: 1. Do anything possible to increase the pace of the game.   2. Shoot as quickly as possible.  3. When in doubt, shoot a three-pointer.

Increasing tempo is the underlying prerequisite, and Westhead does that by inviting opponents to shoot layups. 

 You heard that correctly, he invites layups.

To do that he presses fullcourt the entire game, with the Oregon defender playing between her man and the basket.    What makes Westhead’s style unique, though, is that his defender plays between his team’s own basket and the opposing player.   Opponents almost have to throw over the press, giving them an instant two-on-one break every time.    The shot is made, Oregon takes the ball out of the net, rushes it up court and fires up a three-pointer (the Ducks are fifth nationally in three-pointers made).

Oregon may give up 10 points in two minutes to fall behind by 12, but might score 12 points in the next two minutes to tie it.   The theory is that Oregon can play at that pace the whole game and opponents can’t.

So far Oregon is 13-5 overall and 3-2 in the Pac-10, a significant improvement over last season, when the Ducks went 5-13 in the Pac-10 and finished seventh, the fourth straight season it failed to finish in the top five.    That’s why Bev Smith was fired and replaced by Westhead, who is earning a lot more money as Smith with the hope that his wild, entertaining style with boost the Ducks’ record and home attendance.

The latter is lagging, however.   The 1,909 average home attendance this season is worse than last year’s 2,219, considerably less than the 3,687 of 2006 and far off the school attendance record of 5,852 established in 2000, when Oregon won its second straight Pac-10 regular-season title.

It takes a little while to appreciate the style, and it attracts crowds only when you win.   

Paul Westhead (far left, back row) coached Michael Cooper (21), Magic Johnson (32), Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (33) among other Lakers to the 1980 NBA title -- NBA Getty Images

Westhead has lived and died with the radical style at Loyola Marymount, in the NBA with the Denver Nuggets and in the WNBA with Phoenix.

But he did not begin his coaching career as the running man.   In fact,  Westhead was fired as head coach of the Lakers in 1981 because he was reluctant to play wide-open, fast-break basketball then.    He won the NBA championship with the Lakers in his first season has head coach in 1980, but early in his third season with the Lakers, he was let go, allegedly because Magic Johnson wanted to play an uptempo style and Westhead preferred a halfcourt game played at a deliberate pace to take advantage of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

One of the Lakers players on Westhead’s 1980 championship team was Michael Cooper, now head coach of the USC women’s basketball team.   Oregon and USC will meet on January 30 in Los Angeles.   Now that’s symmetry.