In an end to their four-game loss streak, the Oregon State University women’s basketball team were able to beat out Pepperdine University 63-54 on Thursday in Gill Coliseum.
“I’m proud of the team for rallying this week,” head coach Scott Rueck said. “You just gotta get gritty and tough, and challenge the team before the game to start the game with the same energy that we finished Monday night’s game with.”
The Beavers took the lead early on the second score of the game and never lost it, despite the Waves coming within one point of tying in the third quarter. Running with just seven players all night, four OSU starters scored in the double digits.
Pepperdine ran into foul trouble late in the night, racking five fouls in the last 90 seconds of the game, desperate for any points they could find. After two sets of free throws, Kennedie Shuler brought the game to 61-54 and it was all but over for the Waves. The Beavers defensively held them to scoring only six points in the fourth quarter.
Senior guard Catarina Ferreira was on the floor for 31 minutes and scored her second double-double of 2025 with 13 points and 14 rebounds on the defensive and offensive side of the ball.
“Just getting this momentum is gonna be huge for us and reminding ourselves what we’re capable of,” AJ Marotte said.
Shuler agreed, noting the pivotal change in the team’s feeling coming out of a win, in the post-game press conference.
“We were super focused in practice coming into this game, knowing that we really needed to get this dub, so, proud of the team that we got it just gotta keep it going,” Shuler said.
This was an important comeback for OSU after a tough week, most recently with a loss at home against Washington State University.
“It’s nice to be on the winning side,” Rueck said.
A major difference between this game and previously for the Beavers was the deficit in rebounding: 44 for OSU compared to 28 for Pepperdine. In some of the latest Beaver games, they have scored about the same amount of rebounds as their opponents. It was one of OSU’s main goals to out-rebound Pepperdine.
“That was part of the intensity that we needed to play with,” Rueck explained. “If you take a break for a minute, it feels like that might slide while you’re focusing on something else, and then it’s like, ‘Okay can we sink this whole thing back up and get back to business?’… the way that we play, we should rebound well. We made them miss a lot of shots so there were a lot of defensive rebounds, and I thought our team did a nice job.”
The Waves were able to put on a tough defense, forcing the Beavers to think of creative ways to pass the ball and make shots.
“Everyone’s just focused, like, getting good shots when we were in those moments, I felt like the last few games we were slow to like, respond in those moments,” Marotte said. “So I think everyone did a good job of getting to their money and just being patient and running our plays right- and we got what we wanted most of the time.”
Pepperdine guards Ornela Muca and Malia Mastora led the Waves, scoring half of the team’s points together. The team managed to steal the ball five times, all in the first half, and shared the floor alongside Mastora’s younger sister, Makena, who scored four points.
Pepperdine’s head coach, Katie Faulkner, was a familiar face for the Beavers tonight as she notably served as an assistant coach for OSU for five years.
“The people I’ve worked with, I like. I don’t want to try and get myself not to like them,” Rueck said. “I’m just happy for her that she’s (Faulkner) getting this opportunity, but once the game starts, it’s just another team.”
The Beavers face off against the Saint Mary’s University Rattlers on February 1, and have a rematch with Pepperdine in Malibu, CA on March 1, the last regular game of the season for OSU.