Stanford Stops Oregon State In Crucial Conference Meeting, 83-60

Well, this one is gonna sting.

Oregon State’s NCAA Tournament hopes were still hanging in the balance prior to Thursday’s clash with Stanford, as the Beavers had a manageable stretch of games in front of them, before next week’s Civil War match-up with Oregon. But the Cardinal clearly had a bit different plan on action on their minds, as the boys from Palo Alto dismantled Oregon State in a convincing 83-60 victory at Gill Coliseum, to hand the Beavers their eights defeat of the 2018-2019 campaign.

Stanford, who came into the match-up as near eight point underdogs, moved to 12-10 (5-5) overall on the season with the victory, while Oregon State fell to 14-8 (6-4).

The scariest part of the Cardinal’s deconstruction of the Beavers is that on mostly pedestrian scoring nights from star players Daejon Davis (11 points) and KZ Okpala (10 points), Stanford still found a way to hang 83 points on Oregon State. Huge outings from interior big men Oscar da Silva (23 points) and Josh Sharma (20 points), who combine usually average 17.6 points per contest, turned out to be one of the key offensive exploits for the Cardinal in the contest.

A strong defensive display didn’t hurt too bad either.

While Stanford allowed the Beavers big three of Tres Tinkle (16 points), Stephen Thompson Jr. (15 points) and Ethan Thompson (14 points) to have fairly usual nights (albeit inefficient), the Cardinal clamped down on the rest of the depth chart, allowing the other six players who saw action to combine for just 15 points.

Overall, Oregon State shot an abysmal 1-12 from behind the arc, 38.3% as a team from the field (compared to Stanford’s 53.8%) and the Beavers were also out-rebounded by a convincing 41-26 margin.

The worst part of this defeat for Oregon State now means that without a miracle run in the Pac-12 Tournament, the Beavers will likely have to settle for an NIT bid this post-season. This roster was previously hoped to be the group that would return the Beavers to the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2016.

Up Next: Oregon State will try to get back on track on Saturday (February 9th) when they host California at 2:30 PM PT.