The Beavers almost pulled off the upset Thursday, hanging tough with Arizona for nearly a whole 40 minutes.
Since we've been looking at ESPN's feature, "Game Flow" a lot this season, lets take a look last night's graph.
The first thing you notice is that both were battling back and forth in the first half (our largest lead was 2), until Arizona went on a nice little 10-0 run to finish out the first half. That's what I told you Arizona has the power to do- run, get turnovers, and convert the easy baskets. That was the only major run the Beavers let Arizona go on last night as you can tell by the lack of straight lines on Oregon State's graph.
We obviously can't talk about OSU basketball without talking about shooting percentages, but last night wasn't that bad at all. The Beavers actually out shot their opponents(!), putting up a 48% field goal percentage compared to Arizona's 45%. The Beavers even shot a decent free throw percentage, going 6 of 8 for 75%. Problem was, they didn't get to the line enough. Arizona shot 33 free throws, and that could of been the difference in this game. They made 25, for 76%.
The Beavers are back at Gill on Saturday when they play Arizona State, who gave Oregon all they wanted last night. We've now seen signs of life from both Oregon State and Arizona State, the two worst teams in the Pac-10. We'll see how it goes down on Saturday.
Go Beavers!
--JB--