OFFICIAL Game Thread: Beavs @ Ucla, Feb. 1, 2024

We lost to a hot team, on the road, at their place.

The results sucked, the OSU  basketball team didn’t.

This was a weird game for me. I felt pretty good about how Beavers played coming out of first half. But several minutes into second half, I never felt like they would win despite UCLA never having a double digit lead. The aggressive UCLA D and hard hedges in ball screens seemed to eliminate any offensive flow, and I was disappointed that Tinkle didn’t make any real adjustments at half. Ball movement was poor, not enough off the ball screens and hard cutting with purpose. And that’s how he end up with only 6 assists. But if you told me before game Beavers would shoot 51% from field and 36% from 3, I would have loved the Beavers’ chances. Problem was the D limited the Beavs to only 14 3-pt attempts. Beavers had 20 in AZ upset and in last game against UCLA. Not saying this to stir up the Tinkle debate, but think he got out coached by Cronin in this one.

As many have pointed out, rebounding was an issue with UCLA grabbing 10 more offensive rebounds than Beavs. UCLA also had 4 fewer turnovers. All that led to 12 more FG attempts by UCLA than Beavs hoisted up. Add in a sub 60% FT shooting night and all that leads to Beavers looking OK but not having a strong chance to win.

There were definitely some good things. Four players in double figures was nice, though not sure how many conference games Beavers will win on the road when Pope has third highest FG attempts on team. Rataj had another pretty good game. And Bilodeau continued to show he can be an effective Pac 12 player if he’d stay out of foul trouble.
Let’s hope Beavers can take down USC for the split — and first road conference win in more than a year.

Go Beavs!

We're most always losing to hot teams and if they aren't hot they'll start their streak with us.

Sure it does. There was a reason they struggled:  UCLA's defense.

I'm looking forward to a rare road victory on Saturday. This team can do it.

Exactly right. Ironic that the two main coaches are bigs but can't seem to find a way to coach one up.

Tinkle has taken mostly  unrecruited and often inexperienced big men and put them into the NBA or overseas Pro leagues. 

Eubanks was recruited but very inexperienced, he improved annually while here. Big G improved bigtime while here. Silva improved bigtime while here. Kelley improved, maybe not as much as the others, but he was somewhat polished in his capabilities when he arrived. 

You just can't compare them with players like Bona who were 5 star players out of high school that had been playing longer at a higher level.

I can't fault him on development,  Ibekwe and Mariol have improved while here as well.  If there's anything to fault the coaches on it would be the ability to recruit high level big men that are going to stick around (Washington comes to mind, wish he had stuck around).