Growing up, Katelyn Loper said she always wanted to play basketball in the Pac-10 Conference - now the Pac-12.

Two years ago, a few days after the former Post Falls High star had verbally committed to play at Hofstra University in Hempstead, N.Y., Loper heard from the University of Oregon, expressing their interest.

Loper told the Ducks she had already committed to a college, and said the Ducks respected her verbal and wished her the best.

Two years later, when Loper decided to leave Hofstra and transfer to another school for her final two seasons of college basketball, Oregon was still interested.

And after a stressful summer of meeting with the coaches, waiting for paperwork and waiting for transcripts to be approved, Loper got the official word on Wednesday — she is now an Oregon Duck.

“I’m stress free, and ready to go out there and start this new journey,” Loper said.

Loper started 20 of 27 games last year at Hofstra. She was second on the team in scoring at 12.4 points per game, and led the Pride with 67 3-point baskets. As a freshman, she played in 29 games, starting seven, and was third on the team in scoring at 11.5 points per game, and led the team with 75 3-pointers.

But Loper said “the style of coaching wasn’t what I was used to,” and she decided she wanted to leave. Loper was granted her release from Hofstra at the end of May.

“It wasn’t because I was homesick,” said Loper, a 5-foot-11 guard. “I loved everything Hofstra was about. But for my liking, the coaching wasn’t the style that I was used to.”

When she came back to Post Falls in June for the summer, she said she contacted about 10 schools — Oregon was among them — to let them know she was transferring.

“When they (Oregon) heard I wanted to transfer, they called me, and all of a sudden I was on a visit out there (to Eugene), and I fell in love with it,” Loper said.

She visited Oregon the weekend before the Fourth of July — then the waiting began. After her visit, Duck coaches hit the road recruiting for the rest of the month, and Loper didn’t receive a letter of intent to sign from the school until mid-August. Then there was the time-consuming process of getting her high school and college transcripts sent to Eugene.

Finally, she got the go-ahead earlier this week. Loper will begin classes at Oregon in a couple of weeks, sit out the 2012-13 season per NCAA transfer rules, then have two years of eligibility remaining.

She can practice this year with the team. Two members of the Oregon team — Jordan Loera, a sophomore point guard from Moses Lake, and Danielle Love, a junior forward from Everett, Wash. — played with Loper on Spokane Stars AAU teams in the past.

Loper said Hampton (Va.) had offered her a scholarship. Boise State, who recruited her out of high school, was interested again. And she said she also talked with Gonzaga, San Diego and Washington.

“What I loved most (about Oregon) is their coach, Paul Westhead, is so legendary,” Loper said. “He’s a very smart, very laid-back kind of guy.”

Westhead has won an NBA and a WNBA title as a head coach. But perhaps he’s most famous for the high-scoring Loyola Marymount teams of the late 1980s, which featured Bo Kimble and Hank Gathers.

Loper said Hofstra’s offense was based on Westhead’s system, but she said Oregon runs it even faster than Hofstra did.

Which is just fine with Loper, who is Post Falls’ all-time leading scorer.

“I got to play pickup games down there,” she said of her visit to Eugene, “and they just get the rebound and go. I guess their philosophy is, if you’re open, shoot it.”