Portland’s NCAA Tournament appearance in women’s basketball this Saturday at UCLA’s Pauley Pavilion is the latest success in what has been a banner year for Pilots athletics.
Most of the school’s prominent athletic programs have been high achievers in 2022-23.
UP women’s soccer earned an NCAA playoff berth after a near-decade drought and won a first-round game. The men’s soccer team reached the doorstep of the NCAA’s Final Four, winning three playoff games before losing in the quarterfinals.
Baseball season is only five weeks old, but the Pilots are making noise this spring, having won a three-game series at No. 5 Texas A&M. Men’s basketball is making small strides, having won at least one game at the West Coast Conference tournament in back-to-back years for the first time since the 2009 and 2010 tourneys.
Now it’s women’s basketball, a program that’s been on the move since Michael Meek was named coach in 2019. The Pilots won their second WCC tournament title in four seasons last week, and make their first NCAA Tournament appearance since 1997 (their berth in the 2020 NCAAs was canceled due to the pandemic).
Portland (23-8) plays Oklahoma at 6 p.m. Saturday in a first-round NCAA tourney game.
“What we’ve done in the last year and the success some of other schools have had in our league … schools at our level can still compete at a very high level in Division I,” Portland athletic director Scott Leykam said.
It hasn’t always been like this. Less than a decade ago, Portland’s front-facing programs were reeling, requiring a coaching change in each case.
Women’s soccer, once the pride of Pilots athletics with national titles in 2002 and 2005, stumbled to 5-13-1 in 2017. Men’s soccer won three games in 2015. Men’s basketball won a combined 22 games over a three-year period from 2019-21. Women’s basketball? Even worse, a collective 20-100 over four seasons from 2015-18. Baseball, in a state where Oregon State proved it could be done, went 10-41-1 in 2017.
What happened? It could be said Leykam made a series of smart coaching hires, but the story only begins there.
Leykam, previously a WCC senior associate commissioner before he was hired at UP in 2012, took several years to build a foundation. The revival is fueled by coaches, sure, but it’s also resources, improved facilities and getting busy on the donation trail.
“I think he has a real good feel for the conference,” said Jim Etzel, a former UP Dean’s Advisory Board member and whose family has been long associated with Pilots athletics.
“He had an inside look at all the programs and what the realities were at each school. Then he came in here with eyes wide open with what the realities were at UP.”
Starting with the 2015 hire of baseball coach Geoff Loomis, Leykam has been on a roll. Men’s soccer coach Nick Carlin-Voigt, hired in 2016, won the WCC championship in his first year and earned an NCAA playoff berth four times. Michelle French, hired as women’s soccer coach prior to the 2018 season, got the Pilots into the NCAA playoffs last fall for the first time in nine years.
The basketball programs have been revived with hires of Meek (2019) and Shantay Legans (2021).
Again, it wasn’t always this way.
“I’ll be candid, it took me a couple years to figure out what worked here,” Leykam said.
Leykam’s early assumption was that he needed to hire coaches with a Division I track record. That mindset changed after hiring Loomis, a former Pilot who had .624 winning percentage as a Division III baseball coach at Pacific Lutheran.
Carlin-Voigt hadn’t been a college head coach before taking over in Portland. Legans came from Eastern Washington, from the lower-level Division I Big Sky. Meek was a proven winner at George Fox and Southridge High, but had no experience with Division I.
“If you can find a coach who has won at a number of levels, there’s a good chance you’re going to win at this level, too,” Leykam said.
But there’s only so much motivation and Xs and Os can do to produce a winning program. Portland’s athletic rise is also due to beefed-up resources and facilities.
“It’s as much who we choose and putting things in place that would help whoever we choose to be successful,” Leykam said.
Just over a decade ago, Portland was the only WCC school that didn’t have a major gift officer in athletics. Now the Pilots have two full-time development people, soliciting six- and seven-figure donations.
The budget has grown substantially during Leykam’s tenure, particularly in scholarships. Women’s basketball, baseball, and both soccer teams now fund the NCAA maximum number of scholarships. Track boosted its number from six to 10. Leykam said UP has added 15 to 20 scholarships a year in athletics. Given that the cost of attendance at Portland for 2022-23 is $70,632, that’s no small investment.
Leykam said UP athletics has its largest-ever student-athlete population this year because of a growing number of walk-ons.
“It’s a testament to our coaches and culture that they’ve built that we’ve been able to attract walk-ons,” he said.
When Leykam arrived in 2012, Portland had one academic support person in athletics. They now have four. Also added early in Leykam’s tenure: a summer school budget. Now incoming freshman athletes can spend the summer on campus, take classes and get acclimated to college life. Leykam said it’s helped with grade-point averages and retention of athletes.
Portland’s athletic facilities have improved. The soccer teams now have two full-sized practice fields near campus by the Willamette River. Baseball has one of the nicest stadiums in the WCC. The weight rooms and basketball locker rooms were recently updated.
Yet, there remains a hole in Pilots athletics: men’s basketball. Though it’s improved under Legans, it’s still not a program considered to be even middle of the pack in the WCC. Given that men’s basketball is the UP athletics’ No. 1 revenue source, the Pilots can’t take a victory lap until it succeeds.
“Every sport at Portland wants to compete for championships,” Etzel said. “The only sport that has not found a way to compete for championships is men’s basketball. It’s been a 40-year problem.”
Portland is hopeful men’s basketball soon joins the party. Because there’s a lot to celebrate.
“We have a special time right now,” Etzel said. “We’ve got some great coaches in our program. People are excited about everybody. The coaches like each other. They root for each other.”
-- Nick Daschel reported from Los Angeles.
ndaschel@oregonian.com | @nickdaschel