Pac-12 Tournament: Oregon State Stuns Oregon; Colorado Wins
The team picked to finish last in the Pac-12 (Oregon State) will play the team picked to finish seventh (Colorado) for the Pac-12 tournament championship on Saturday night.
The Pac-12 has a chance to get a fifth team into the NCAA tournament because Oregon State pulled off its second upset in two days.
In Friday's first Pac-12 tournament semifinal game in Las Vegas, the fifth-seeded Beavers stunned regular-season champion Oregon 75-64, ending the Ducks' six-game winning streak. One day earlier the fifth-seeded Beavers had defeated fourth-seeded UCLA.
Later, Colorado's D'Shawn Schwartz stuffed in a missed shot with 3.3 seconds left to give the Buffaloes a 72-70 victory over second-seeded USC in the other semifinal game. (See a recap of this game below.)
If the Beavers can pull off one more upset when they face Colorado in Saturday's 7:30 p.m. championship game, they will earn an automatic berth to the NCAA tournament.
You may recall that the Beavers were picked to finish last in the Pac-12 in the preseason media poll. They finished tied for sixth and now they are one win from getting to the NCAA tournament for the first time since 2016 and just the second time since 1990.
Oregon, Colorado and USC all seem assured of NCAA tournament bids, and UCLA is likely to get one too, although the Bruins are close enough to the bubble to cause some concern. And adding Oregon State to the list would give the conference five tournament teams. It's unlikely that an Oregon State win Saturday would knock UCLA out of the 68-team field, but it's possible.
If the Beavers (16-12) lose Friday, they have no chance to get into the NCAA tournament, but if they play as well as they did Friday, they can beat any Pac-12 opponent.
"Oregon State just outplayed us; they outworked us," Oregon coach Dana Altman said. "They just flat-out beat us."
The Beavers had lost to Oregon 80-67 in the final regular-season game on Sunday, but they led Friday's matchup almost from the start. Oregon State held a 19-point lead with 13:02 left, then weathered an Oregon rally that got the Ducks within five points with 4:34 left. Jarod Lukas hit a three-point shot despite severe pressure from two Oregon defenders to push the Oregon State lead back to eight points with 4:01 left and halt the Ducks' threat.
The biggest shot of the game
The Beavers shot 50 percent from the floor and made 10 of 19 three-point shots. Ethan Thompson finished with 16 points and made 5 of his first 6 shots from long range and finished 5-for-8 from beyond the arc.
Meanwhile, Oregon, which led the conference in three-point-shooting percentage and had made 56.3 percent of its three-point shots over the previous four games, was just 6-for-25 from distance (24 percent).
"There's a reason we led the league in defensive field-goal percentage from three," Oregon State coach Wayne Tinkle said. "We were confident this wasn't going to be our last night in Vegas."
The Beavers dominated the boards, outrebounding the Ducks (20-6) by a 38-24 margin. Warith Alatishe has 12 points and 12 rebounds for the Beavers, and Rodrigue Andela had 13 points and nine boards.
Chris Durate, LJ Figueroa and Eugene Omoruyi scored 14 points apiece for Oregon, but none of them made more than half their shots.
Tinkle's postgame press conference:
Asked about the notion that Oregon State is just one win from a berth in the NCAA tournament, Tinkle said, "Yeah, it's a good question, but again my head's still swirling a little bit."
Colorado 72, USC 70
Third-seeded Colorado nearly let a 12-point lead with 3:54 left slip away, but the Buffaloes were saved by Schwartz.
Colorado (22-7) seemed to have survived the USC rally when McKinley Wright IV, who finished with 24 points, scored with 1:40 left to give the Buffaloes a six-point lead. But a three-point shot by USC's Tahj Eaddy followed by a three-point play by Eaddy tied the game with 35 seconds to go.
On Colorado's ensuing possession, McKinley missed on an 18-foot shot from the top of the key that barely beat the shot clock. But while the shot clock buzzer sounded, Schwartz swooped in and jammed in the miss with 3.3 seconds left to put the Buffaloes up by two.
McKinley then broke up a pass intended for Eaddy running the right sideline to end the game.
Colorado celebrates D'Shawn Schwartz's tip-in. Photo by Stephen R. Sylvanie, USA TODAY
McKinley had left the game and returned to the locker room for several minutes after taking a hard elbow to the side of the head from USC's Chevez Goodwin with 13:50 left in the first half. But he returned to have one of his best games, going 4-for-6 on three-pointers and adding five rebounds and four assists.
Colorado's Jeriah Horne scored 19 points and hit two critical three-pointers down the stretch while finishing 4-for-8 from distance.
But the best player on the court was USC freshman Evan Mobley. After scoring 26 points in the double-overtime win over Utah on Thursday, the Pac-12 player of the year was even better on Friday, collecting 26 points on 11-for-16 shooting while adding nine rebounds and five blocks. He had a big three-pointer when the Trojans (22-7) were mounting their late attack.
Colorado had dominated the early going, using a 17-0 run to take a lead it held throughout the game until the final minute. But USC slowly worked its way back to tie the game, though it never had a lead in the second half.
Colorado won both of its regular-season games against Oregon State, and the Beavers would have to beat three of the top four seeds on three consecutive nights to pull out a title and an NCAA berth.
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Cover photo of Oregon State's Warith Alatishe and Rodrigue Andela by Stephen Sylvanie, USA TODAY Sports
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Follow Jake Curtis of Cal Sports Report on Twitter: @jakecurtis53
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