Oregon State men’s basketball defeated the University of Texas at San Antonio Roadrunners 66-65 on Dec. 17 in Gill Coliseum.
Oregon State entered the game with a 6-3 record while the Roadrunners were 5-5. The Beavers improved to 7-0 at home while the Roadrunners fell to 1-5 on the road.
In a game that UTSA led for almost the entirety of the first half and led by as much as nine points, it was the Beavers who made critical plays down the stretch. Oregon State scored the game’s final two points on a pair of free throws by Jordan Pope with 13 seconds remaining.
Pope was OSU’s player of the game, scoring 19 points, which included the Beavers’ first eight points in the contest. Pope also recorded four assists and two rebounds to complement his 7-14 shooting from the field. Pope went 2-2 from the charity stripe, the two points that gave Oregon State the final lead.
The opening minutes of the first half saw UTSA make the first basket with a three-pointer from Carlton Linguard Jr., though for every bucket the Roadrunners would make, Oregon State was not far behind.
Tied at 17-17 with eight minutes left in the first half, UTSA would go on a 10-1 scoring run that ended with Oregon State’s Josiah Lake II making a layup to cut the Beavers’ deficit to 27-20 with 4:56 remaining in the half.
The Beavers and Roadrunners would trade baskets from their own out to the end of the half, with UTSA entering the locker room with a 33-27 lead. Their advantage was built on 14-30 shooting from the field, which includes 5-13 on three-point shots. The Beavers shot 11-28 in the first half, and 2-6 from deep.
But as the second half got underway, Oregon State was chipping away at the Roadrunners’ lead before they zipped away with the game in hand. Oregon State came out of the locker room and had Jordan Pope nail a three-point shot only 14 seconds into the period, bringing the game to 33-30.
A KC Ibekwe layup trimmed the UTSA lead to just one point, at 33-32, but the Roadrunners once again went on a scoring run, this time 6-1. The Beavers, looking at a 39-33 UTSA advantage with just over 16 minutes remaining, would find the extra gear they needed to go on a run of their own and take back the lead.
With points from Christian Wright, KC Ibekwe and Tyler Bilodeau, Oregon State engineered their own scoring run, 10-1. This flipped the game from a 39-33 UTSA lead with 16:29 remaining, to a 43-40 Oregon State lead with 13:06 left to play.
It was a slugfest for the rest of the game, with foul after foul being called on either side and no team able to build a lead bigger than four points. There were 10 fouls in the final 13 minutes of the game, compared to 12 in the entire first half.
After the Roadrunners’ Jordan Ivy-Curry made a layup with 1:13 remaining to give UTSA a 65-62 advantage, the Beavers responded with a Dexter Akanno jumper a mere 15 seconds later. The UTSA lead was just one point, 65-64.
On the ensuing possession, Ivy-Curry missed a jumper and Oregon State’s Pope collected the rebound and raced down the court only to miss a long two-pointer. The Roadrunners’ Linguard Jr. got the rebound and was fouled by OSU’s Michael Rataj with 22 seconds left to play.
Linguard Jr. missed the free throw, OSU’s Christian Wright nabbed the rebound with 21 seconds left and passed it to Pope, and with 13 seconds left, Pope was fouled and sent to the free throw line.
First free throw. Net. Tie game.
Second free throw. Net. Oregon State lead.
With no timeouts, the Roadrunners were forced to race down the court and have Ivory-Curry heave up a prayer in the paint. It was no good. The Beavers’ Michael Rataj pulled down the rebound, adroitly threw it out of the paint towards midcourt, and the game ended.
After the game, Oregon State head basketball coach Wayne Tinkle was happy with the win and the team’s strategy saying:
“Super super happy with the win…guys again, great resiliency, were relentless…they’ve been taking 37-plus threes a game over their last four, and cutting that in half was huge, and we told our guys if they live shooting two’s, they can’t beat us.”
About his game-winning free-throws, Pope extolled upon his approach to the game:
“…I try not to overthink it…I practice my free throws every day, get a lot of reps in, so it’s just another free throw to me.”
The OSU men’s basketball team next plays in Corvallis on Dec. 21 against the Idaho State University Bengals at 4:00 p.m.
