Game #8: Dec. 9, 2020; New Hampshire Wildcats (5-2) at Oregon State Beavers (2-5)
We head into the toughest part of our schedule, 5 straight road games in a 2-1/2 week period.
Oregon State has beaten #17 Michigan State at home and lost on the road to #1 Louisville. SG Jason Bryant leads their scoring with 9.9 ppg, but their strongest player is SF Alton Gray, who while only scoring 9.6 ppg, has hit a high percentage of his shots and is really the Beavers’ floor leader.
Uncharacteristically, we made 6 turnovers in the first 6 minutes of play. Even though we didn’t shoot well (37%) and had 9 turnovers in the first half, we gamely hung in with the Beavers and finally took a small lead at the 4:15 mark. We left the court with a 37-33 lead. Travis Stone scored 9 points to lead our scoring.
The Beavers came out in the 2nd half with their shooting eyes locked in and took a 49-42 lead with 15 minutes to play. We fought back to take a 52-51 lead with just over 9 minutes to play.
OSU regained the lead but with 3:51 to play we pulled into a 63-63 tie. Kueth Kirtz launched a bomb from way outside to give us a 68-66 lead with 2 minutes on the clock. Both teams turned the ball over twice in the following 45 seconds. The Beavers beat our full-court press and scored on a jam to tie the game with one minute left. With the OSU fans going crazy in Gil Coliseum, I called a time out. Our designed play failed and Oregon State brought it quickly upcourt and took a 70-68 lead with 42 seconds remaining.
Byron Winlan drilled a 3 at 0:27 and we led 71-70. Clay Houston partially blocked an inside jumper by the Beavers and we got the ball back with 15 seconds to play. The fact that the refs had only called 2 team fouls against Oregon State in the first 19-3/4 minutes worked to our advantage. Oregon State fouled 3 times on inbound passes but still had 2 fouls before we would go to the line. So with 8 seconds to go they allowed us to bring it up court. Seeing a foul coming, Keith Kurtz wisely fired up a shot from outside the arc. He dropped in all 3 of the resulting free throw attempts and the game was ours.
Final Score: New Hampshire-74, Oregon State-70. New Hampshire season record: 6-2.
Scoring leaders: Kirtz-24, Stone-11, Houston-11, Howard-10, Windlan-10.
Rebound leaders: Houston-8, Stone-5, Kresse-5.
Assist leaders: Howard-3, Neubauer-3, Kirtz-3.
Player of the Game: PG Kueth Kirtz-24 pts, 3 reb, 3 assists, 2 blocks.
Coach’s Pat on the Back Award: C Clay Houston-11 pts, 8 reb, 1 assist, 1 block.
Other notes: We were outshot by the Beavers (48% to 39% from the field and 67% to 33% from 3 point distance), but we forced Oregon State to turn the ball over 22 times (+8) and hit 19 of 19 from the free throw line.
This was a game in which we trailed much more than we led and we were outplayed in many aspect, but showed the grit to hang in and take advantage of Beaver mistakes.
Even with a dominating win at home and a come-from-behind win on the road against a Pac-12 team, our RPI slipped slightly to 36th best in the country.