Oregon kept its two-loss record in its new conference Sunday afternoon and secured a 2-0 record on the week after a sweep of the bottom-of-the-conference Rutgers Scarlet Knights. 

The No. 11 Ducks (16-3, 8-2 Big Ten) rolled into Sunday’s contest off the back of a gritty, but impressive sweep of Maryland. Rutgers (5-16, 0-10 Big Ten) stumbled into Sunday losing all of its previous nine matchups. The Knights showed fight in the first set, but Oregon’s offense could not be stopped today, as the Ducks powered themselves to a resounding sweep (26-24, 25-18, 25-14). 

“It’s always different. Look at those three sets, those are three completely different sets. Same people, same teams, but you never know how it’s gonna go, so for us it’s about consistency,” head coach Matt Ulmer said. 

Oregon opened the match with a clear gameplan in mind — defense. The Ducks sat back for the first set and allowed Rutgers to desperately try to open up the block, which forced the Knights onto their back foot.

The Ducks started with a 6-1 run, which included two kills each from Mimi Colyer and Noemie Glover — they finished with 12 and 8 kills, respectively. Rutgers started catching the Ducks sleeping, which translated into a small Scarlet Knights run that made the opening set competitive. 

Onye Ofoegbu also added 12 of her own kills to join Colyer to co-lead the match. 

“[The setters] were putting us in great situations, and Roberta [Purashaj] did a good job of that today, just putting me in great situations,” Ofoegbu said. 

Once Rutgers figured out how to set up the defense to take away the outside for Oregon, the Knights forced the Ducks into mistakes. After a defensive miscue between Colyer and libero Mackenzie Morris, Rutgers took its first lead in the match at 16-15. 

What hurt the Ducks was their complacency on offense. While Ulmer’s squads tend to play much faster than their opponents, the offense was working too fast. At the same time, Oregon had a 13 point stretch where it only served three times, which prevented the Ducks from forcing the game to be played at their pace. 

Almost as soon as that stretch ended, Oregon started its comeback in the set. In fact, Oregon would lose just one more point in the first set. The Ducks took a 6-1 run at the end of the set to an emphatic 1-0 set lead — one which didn’t seem all too possible just seven points before. 

Oregon’s offense started the second set retaining all the momentum they secured at the end of the first. The Ducks found success spreading the ball out wide and forcing the Knights’ back line to drop, which allowed the strong arms like Colyer and Michelle Ohwobete to secure easy kills. 

Rutgers kept trying to slow the match down, but Oregon’s offense was too hard to stop, especially when the Ducks served. 

“We had a handful of people that went back there [to serve], and put runs together to put some pressure on them. I thought we executed from a pretty high level, and that was exciting to see,” Ulmer said.

The Knights put together a small spurt of scoring towards the end of the second set, but the control Oregon had over the game was clear and unrelenting. The Ducks easily took the second set 25-18, and the score doesn’t reflect how much Oregon dominated in the frame. 

Even if the defense slightly regressed at times, the offense never slowed down, which fueled the Ducks to a 2-0 lead. 

“[The Knights] don’t get blocked very often, and in the first set, I don’t think we had any blocks, which for us, that is very rare. It took us almost too long to adjust to what they were,” Ulmer said.

The Knights didn’t allow the third set to mirror the second, and they shored up their defense and stayed consistent on offense to force the Ducks into mistakes. The score sat at 13-10 at one point, and it looked as if Rutgers had a route back into the set, but Oregon’s excellent serving and suffocating attack shut down those hopes. 

The Ducks marched on the rest of the set and posted their second-straight sweep, which capped off a very successful week for the squad. 

“Overall, going 6-0 in sets on the weekend at home in this conference, feeling good about that, and we’ll have quite the stretch going forward, so we’ll continue to get better,” Ulmer said.

Oregon returns to action Wednesday night in Seattle to take on the Huskies at 6:30 p.m.