M. hoops looks to leave Beavers on backs
Team hungry for win, hopes to secure tie this weekend for Pac-10 Championship this weekend
By Scott Yamaguchi
Daily Bruin Staff
You almost have to feel sorry for the Oregon State men's basketball team.
Not so much because the Beavers have won just three of their 21 games this season and are almost as bad as their school's football team, but more because they must host UCLA tonight in a 7:05 p.m. matchup at Gil Coliseum.
And the Bruins are not a happy team at this particular juncture.
"We're really hungry right now," Bruin forward J.R. Henderson said. "Whoever we play, I really feel sorry for them, because we're ready to play - we can't wait to get out there.
"We've got a lot of frustration to let out."
The frustration, which stems from Sunday's 85-66 loss at Duke, will surely be vented on the Beavers, who are well acquainted with their role as the Pac-10 Conference punching bag.
Since sharing the league championship in 1990, the Oregon State program has been in steady decline.
The Beavers met the .500 winning percentage mark in 1991, then slipped one game below in both 1992 and 1993. In 1994, they suffered through a 6-21 season - the worst in school history. Things improved slightly last year, and the Beavers sent retiring head coach Jim Anderson off with a 9-18 record and a seventh-place conference finish.
But this season, under first-year head coach Eddie Payne, Oregon State has once again gone to the tank. The Beavers sit alone in last place in the conference standings, having won just one league game - a 63-55 upset of Washington in Corvallis. They have lost 13 consecutive games since the win over the Huskies, and not one of Oregon State's players can be found among the conference leaders in scoring, rebounding or assists.
Senior guard J.D. Vetter is the only OSU player who averages double figures in scoring, and he averages just 10 points per game.
In fact, as a team, the Beavers rank last in the league in virtually every major statistical category. With a rebounding margin of -7.5, they are sure to finish their 12th consecutive season with a negative number in that area, and their scoring average of 56.3 is the worst in the league by almost 14 points.
UCLA, meanwhile, continues to lead the league in rebounding margin with an average difference of +6.9, and the Bruins' 78.5 points per game ranks them second in the league.
Oregon State's low scoring output, however, is clearly the result of Payne's slow-tempo game plan, and the Beavers do rank third in the league in scoring defense, giving up 68.1 points per game.
The first time the two teams met this season, Feb. 3 in Pauley Pavilion, the Beavers' strategy nearly worked to perfection. UCLA took only 39 shots from the floor, and they were held nine points below their season average in the 69-60 win. Vetter led Oregon State with a career-high 19 points, while reserve forward Bob Myers paced UCLA with 20 points, also a career high.
Myers, who usually plays about six minutes, saw 22 minutes of action in that game, when the starting squad was pulled by a disappointed Jim Harrick.
Harrick, who will be guaranteed his eighth straight 20-win season as head coach if the Bruins are victorious, is expecting the same sort of game from the Beavers this time around.
"Oregon State will probably hold on to the ball like they have all season," he said. "We've just got to go up there and play."
But he is not concerned that his team, which plays at Oregon Saturday and could guarantee itself a share of the Pac-10 title with two wins this weekend, will be lacking any intensity.
"Oregon and Oregon State didn't see the real UCLA team when they were down in Los Angeles," he said. "We were on a week-long hiatus then."Comments to webmaster@db.asucla.ucla.edu