Numbers to Know: Oregon State (2-3) vs. Long Beach State (3-3)

Oregon State just completed a rarity in college basketball: they played a non-conference opponent for the second time in the month of November.

It was less than a week ago that Oregon State hosted Long Beach State in a non-conference game at Gill Coliseum. The Beavers won that game by a score of 89-81. As fate would have it, Oregon State and Long Beach State are both participants in this year's Advocare Invitational and they both lost their first-round game. The way that the brackets worked out, this meant that Long Beach State would have a shot a revenge.

This time around, it was the 49ers that would leave the court with a victory, beating the Beavers by a score of 74-69.

Here are some numbers from the game:

8 - Total points from Oregon State bench players. Zach Reichle and Gligorije Rakocevic each had four points in the game, but no other non-starter scored for the Beavers. By comparison, Long Beach State had four different bench players combine for 24 points in the game. The last couple of games for Oregon State have made it painfully obvious that the Beavers are entirely dependent on the big four of Drew Eubanks, Tres Tinkle, Stephen Thompson Jr., and Ethan Thompson. If those four can't get it done by themselves, wins will be hard to come by.

6 - It was just six days ago that Drew Eubanks feasted on the Long Beach State defense, scoring 26 points on 9-12 shooting from the field and making all eight of his free throw attempts. This time around, Eubanks scored just 6 points on 3-5 shooting from the field and he also missed both of his free throw attempts in the game. Maybe it was the defense of Long Beach State adjusting for the big man or maybe it was Eubanks feeling less at home in Orlando than he does in Corvallis, but Oregon State needs more in the box score from their athletic center.

12.5% - Oregon State's three-point shooting in the game. The Beavers took 24 shots from beyond the arc and made only three of them. Jaquori McLaughlin went 0-4. Stephen Thompson Jr. went 2-7. Tres Tinkle went 0-7. Ethan Thompson went 0-2. This kind of shooting is likely an anomaly, and will hopefully end up being the worst that we'll see from this team all season.

3/9/16 - That's the date that the Beavers last won a game away from Gill Coliseum. Since beating Arizona State on March 9th, 2016 in the Pac-12 Tournament in Las Vegas, Oregon State has lost 18 straight games played either on the road or in neutral locations. Granted, there haven't been many victories inside of Gill Coliseum during that span either, but the number isn't zero.

6.3 - Average margin of loss for Oregon State through three losses this year. Look, the Beavers shouldn't have blown the game against St. John's. They lost to Long Beach State because Eubanks wasn't a scoring factor and they also couldn't hit anything from outside. Oregon State has a solid argument that they should be 4-1 right now. But they are not. They are 2-3 with a nine-point loss and two five-point losses. Last season's Beaver squad lost 27 games by an average margin of 13.8 points. The season is young, but this squad—despite the disappointing early losses—will be much more competitive than last year's.

Oregon State (2-3) next plays Marist (0-5) on Sunday in a final consolation game in the Advocate Invitational.