Oregon uses 22-4 run to close out first half for win

By Aaron Yost
Corvallis Gazette-Times

CORVALLIS — Josh Tarver hung his head through most of the postgame media conference, looking up to answer questions, but otherwise striving to be alone with his thoughts.

Sitting beside him, Sasa Cuic met everyone’s gaze with red-rimmed eyes.

They both looked at the statistics and searched for where things went awry.

For more than 32 minutes Tarver, Cuic and the rest of the Oregon State men’s basketball team gave No. 20 Oregon all that it could handle.

But it was during the other 7:30 that the undefeated Ducks exerted their will, going on a 22-4 run to close out the first half of the 326th Civil War. Oregon withstood the Beavers’ best effort in the second half to claim the 76-73 Pacific-10 Conference opener Saturday in front of 8,719 in Gill Coliseum.

“Well, we had our chances, ain’t no doubt about that,” OSU coach Jay John said. “The guys played extremely hard and defensively, for the most part, defensively I thought we played well the entire game.

“The unfortunate part was, for about six minutes, our offense absolutely destroyed us.”

Having built a 30-19 advantage with 7:32 remaining in the first half, OSU (8-6, 0-1) went into self-destruct mode.

Of the Beavers’ final 12 possessions of the half, they had four missed shots and six turnovers. Against the Ducks (13-0, 1-0), it was like throwing jet fuel on a fire.

Aaron Brooks tied the game at 33 with two free throws with 2:48 left and Joevan Catron put Oregon ahead for good with a lay-in 32 seconds later.

That run undid much of the good the Beavers had done earlier in the game. They were shooting better than 70 percent from the floor when they seized that 11-point lead.

For the game OSU shot 51.7 percent from the floor, its fourth game better than 50 percent. But it is 2-2 in those games.

“Right now, it’s just a tough loss,” Cuic said. “We knew how good we were after some of the preseason games, we knew we were ready for the Pac-10. But this game is different. This game is more than just a regular Pac-10 game.

“You come in preparing for it, saying it’s just another game, and you end up losing like this at home, this needs to be something that we’ll remember.”

Cuic and Marcel Jones led five Beavers in double figures with 16 points, while Tarver had 15 points and a career-high seven assists.

Tarver also had the personal misery of five turnovers — four during that critical stretch before halftime. He made just one turnover in the second half, but was so disgusted with his free-throw shooting that he tossed up the rebound of a miss with 2:08 left, rather than tapping the ball to the official.

“If I could have hit free throws today ...” he said. “It pretty much cost us the game — just turnovers and free throws.”

John echoed that sentiment, after seeing his team shoot 8 of 14 from the line and 5 of 17 from beyond the 3-point arc.

“The unfortunate thing was Oregon hit their threes and got to the free-throw line,” John said. “If we shot the same percentage from the line as they did, we might still be playing up there.”

Oregon State pressed home the issue throughout the second half, but the Beavers could never quite close the gap.

They would pull within three, only to see the Ducks push the margin wider again.

Jones — who had his seventh career double-double and third of the season with 10 rebounds — accounted for the final margin by hitting a 3-pointer with a second remaining.

“I feel we outplayed them in the second half and they played well enough that the margin of our outplaying them was not that much,” John said. “Games are 40 minutes and you can lose a game in the first five minutes as well as in the last two, too.”