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Preview: Oregon State Women’s Basketball Versus Arizona State

Beavers look to right the ship against the Sun Devils

By Leo Castaneda
NCAA Basketball: Washington State at Arizona State Joe Camporeale-USA TODAY Sports

The Oregon State Women’s Basketball Team hosts Arizona State this Friday. The Beavers are coming off of their first two game losing streak in four years and have a glaring issue to address in turnovers. The game is set for 6 PM on the Pac-12 Network, but if you can’t watch, listen to Oregon State AllAccess, or follow along on Twitter. Let’s look at the Sun Devils.

Arizona State (#18 in AP Poll, 13-3 overall, 4-0 Pac-12)

The squad from Tempe comes into Corvallis on a six-game winning streak, including four in league play. In last weekend’s Pac-12 series, they swept the Bay Area schools to stay atop of the Pac-12 standings along with Oregon. Arizona State features the conference’s best scoring defense at 56.3 points per game, just a fraction ahead of Oregon State’s 56.5.

Arizona State’s leading scorer is junior forward Kianna Ibis, who averages 13.5 points per game. Their second leading scorer is also the conference’s most accurate three point shooter in sophomore forward Jamie Ruden. The sharp-shooter is hitting over 52% of her shots from beyond the arc in a off the bench role while averaging 10.8 points. Junior center Charnea Johnson-Chapman is the team’s best rebounder at 7.3 per game, while also ranking third in the conference in shooting percentage at nearly 60%. Watch out for their floor general sophomore guard Reili Richardson as well. She has three games with double digit assists so far and leads the league in assist-to-turnover ratio by a large margin at 4.6 (1.4 better than the next best).

Prediction

Oregon State was exposed last week in their trip to Southern California, giving up 48 turnovers in two games against quality opponents. While the Beavers own a five game winning streak over the Sun Devils, they are on the wrong side of two teams trending opposite directions. Marie Gulich will continue her hot start to Pac-12 play (per game averages of 19.5 points and 9.3 rebounds), but it won’t be quite enough to power the Beavers over the hump in another close loss.