Beavs can't hold the zone against UCLA

OREGON STATE HAS had these maddening little lulls this season on the hardcourt, where in a close game they quickly -- very quickly -- fall behind by double digits in the blink of an eye. And then they spend the rest of the game trying to undo the damage down over that brief space of time. Such was again the case on Saturday, in a 62-52 loss to the Bruins.

This time it was a 12-2 run that sank the Beavs. It also didn't help that they couldn't hit a free throw.

Oregon State clawed back from a six-point halftime deficit to take a lead 30-28 lead at the 15:29 mark. UCLA then forged a modest advantage, to 38-35, before going on a 12-2 run that broke the Oregon State zone defense and gave the Bruins a 50-37 lead.

There was no coming all the way back from that.

"You cannot have any lapses in conferences games because people take advantage of it," said Craig Robinson.

The Beavs got no closer than six the rest of the way. While UCLA struggled much of the game against the Beaver zone, they began to solve it in the second half, finding open men under the basket and piling up the points.

OSU on the other hand, as the game went on had more and more difficulty finding the range against the Bruin zone defense.

OREGON STATE SHOT 9-for-17 from the free throw line and had to close with a flourish to do that. The Beavs started out 0-for-6 from the charity stripe.

There were a number of times in the second half, a missed shot here from close range, a wide open look there, where the Beavs could have applied pressure to the Bruins. But OSU has not been a good shooting team this season, not consistently anyway.

"We are all players, and we had just as many, if not more. opportunities to get shots up, and make them. We took 51 shots, and they only took 35. It’s disappointing not to win a game with that kind of discrepancy," said Robinson.

Calvin Haynes had a game-high 16 points for the Beavers (9-12, 3-6), and Roeland Schaftenaar went for 11.

Seth Tarver had five assists to go along with a block and two steals.