The ultimate guide to Oregon senior Sabrina Ionescu
In between playing in front of Kobe Bryant sitting courtside and tweeting at Stephen Curry, Oregon senior Sabrina Ionescu has helped elevate the Pac-12 into the nation’s top conference in women’s college basketball and looks to lead the Ducks to their second consecutive Final Four.
The 5-foot-11 guard is the front-runner for national player of the year and the projected No. 1 pick in April’s WNBA draft.
Ionescu is also a triple-double machine, and she just keeps adding to her NCAA career record for men and women. Her total sits at 20, but Ionescu’s ultimate goal is guiding Oregon to its first national title.
We’re tracking the journey, the stat watch and record countdown. We’ve got it all. Even how to pronounce her last name.
STATS | TRIPLE-DOUBLE TRACKER | HIGHLIGHTS | SCHEDULE
Nobody does triple-doubles like Ionescu. She posted an NCAA single-season record eight last season as a junior, and she has two so far this season, bringing her career mark to 20. That’s eight more than second place.
And it’s also more triple-doubles than some of the nation’s top women’s college basketball programs combined. Stanford leads the way with eight triple-doubles in program history. Among the other programs with the most triple-doubles, South Carolina and Notre Dame both have seven all time, Baylor has six and UConn has five.
Friends call her Sabs. But maybe that’s just because her last name is often mispronounced. We’re here to help: YO-ness-coo.
YO-NESS-COO. Say it with us. #GoDucks https://t.co/nQk7eFetZ9
Sabrina Ionescu buries the trey, giving her the most 3-pointers in school history.
Through Oregon’s Dec. 16 win over UC Riverside, Ionescu is averaging 14.4 points, 9.3 rebounds and 9.0 assists per game. Next up: home vs. Kansas State on Saturday.
Ionescu holds the NCAA record for men and women with 20 career triple-doubles.
Oregon is 20-0 in games in which Ionescu tallies a triple-double
11 occurred on a Sunday; 15 occurred in Eugene in home games
She scored at least 20 points in six triple-doubles; scored 29 points twice
Most rebounds: 18; most assists: 14 (three times)
Triple-doubles by year: Senior (2), junior (8), sophomore (6), freshman (4)
Next-best NCAA mark: 12 triple-doubles, BYU’s Kyle Collinsworth
Her first triple-double, on Nov. 27, 2016, in her seventh college game, was Oregon’s first since 1988
Sabrina Ionescu recorded her 20th career triple-double today in her 119th career game.
According to @EliasSports, the only player in NBA, WNBA, or Men’s or Women’s D-I basketball history to reach 20 career triple-doubles in fewer career games was Oscar Robertson. pic.twitter.com/Gklyrj1inP
Kobe Bryant looks at Oregon’s Sabrina Ionescu’s tape and how she operates in the pick and roll. Watch episodes of “Detail” exclusively on ESPN+.
Prior to the 2019 Women’s Final Four, Kobe Bryant broke down game tape of Ionescu and how she operates in the pick-and-roll. Watch episodes of “Detail” exclusively on ESPN+.
Ionescu is on pace to become the first men’s or women’s college basketball player to amass 2,000 career points, 1,000 rebounds and 1,000 assists. If she reaches the milestones, it likely won’t be until late in the season. She currently sits at 2,128 points, 849 rebounds and 882 assists.
Sabrina Ionescu continues to increase her career-leading triple-double total with 29 points, 12 assists and 10 rebounds in Oregon’s win.
Ionescu has tallied triple-doubles any way you can imagine. There is the time she had eight rebounds and six assists — in a single quarter. She has recorded back-to-back triple-doubles — on two occasions. And in her 12th triple-double, she had seven turnovers. “That was like the worst triple-double I’ve ever had,” Ionescu said afterward. “It almost shouldn’t count.”
But what happens when the clock is winding down and you’re one rebound short of a triple-double?
In the second round of last season’s NCAA tournament, No. 2 seed Oregon led Indiana by 23 points when Ionescu spotted up for a 3-pointer near the top of the arc. It missed, and Ionescu picked up the ensuing rebound with 2:28 left to secure her 18th triple-double, becoming the second women’s player to have multiple triple-doubles in the NCAA tournament.
In the postgame courtside interview, ESPN’s Dave Pasch asked Ionescu if she missed her last shot on purpose.
“A little bit, a little bit,” said. “I knew exactly where it was going to go, so I was like, ‘Let me just kind of add a little more rotation on this shot so I can get it back.'”
But just to be clear, Oregon coach Kelly Graves says no one works harder than Ionescu.
“The thing about Sabrina is, she does it every day in practice too, not just when the lights go on,” Graves said after Ionescu’s seventh triple-double, during her sophomore season. “She does it each and every day; she’s our hardest worker.”
When coach Graves arrived in Eugene in 2014, the Ducks hadn’t had a winning season since the 2009-10 campaign. Then in 2015, Ionescu and the rest of this year’s senior class took the court. As the wins have piled up, so have the attendance figures. In fact, six of the top seven biggest crowds in Oregon women’s basketball history occurred last season — including a school-record 12,364 fans for the Civil War matchup with Oregon State on Feb. 15.
Home attendance increased by 175% from Ionescu’s freshman season to her junior season, as more than 121,500 fans flooded Matthew Knight Arena in 2018-19. Oregon averaged 7,148 fans last season to rank eighth in the country in attendance.
Competitive with each other from an early age, twins Sabrina and Eddy Ionescu’s sibling rivalry hasn’t changed a bit over the years.
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