EUGENE — When preseason practice began, there was an addition to the Oregon women’s basketball locker room courtesy of the coaching staff: A picture of the Tampa skyline.

For as little as the future or long-term goals are discussed by the Ducks, the image of the site of this year’s NCAA Women’s Final Four was all that needed to be said to strike a chord with a team that’s been to back-to-back Elite Eights.

“I love the idea because we won’t talk about it, but it’ll be there,” said Sabrina Ionescu, Oregon’s leading scorer and a national player of the year candidate. “I think everyone has that in the back of their mind, that the ultimate goal would be to achieve more than we did these last few years, which is the Elite Eight. Having that picture in there, everyone understands that’s where we want to get but no one talks about it and it’s not really something that we talk about too much.”

The Ducks have bought in to coach Kelly Graves’ message of focusing on the daily task at hand and not even setting team goals for the season.

“We don’t have a goal for going to the Final Four, winning a national championship, winning the Pac-12. That’s not what we’ve ever been about,” Graves said. “Our goal is to get better each and every day. If you only think March and April then I think you do a disservice to your basketball team. I think it’s about the process, it’s about getting better each and every day. … I think if we achieve our full potential, then who knows what the limit is? We aren’t thinking that far ahead.”

Oregon opened the season with a 115-36 win over Alaska-Fairbanks on Tuesday in a homecoming for power forward Ruthy Hebard that will count in the record books, though it was an exhibition for the Division II Nanooks and will not count toward Oregon’s RPI or NET rankings.

But the real tests begin on Saturday afternoon when No. 3 Oregon hosts No. 18 Syracuse.

When the Ducks take the floor at Matthew Knight Arena for the first time this season, the players will pass the picture of the destination where they hope their 2018-19 journey will end.

“We know what we can do and where we are at. I think seeing it every day is going to be a big reminder that we can make it there,” Hebard said. “We were talking about how we should slap it before every game or something just for a little more motivation.”