10 Takeaways From Oregon State's 27-24 Loss To Arizona

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With the Oregon State football team (6-2, 3-2 Pac-12) falling to Arizona (5-3, 3-2) 27-24 at Arizona Stadium on Saturday evening, BeaversEdge compiles our game thoughts into 10 important takeaways!

MORE: WATCH: Oregon State Talks Arizona Loss | RECAP - OSU Upset By Arizona

Oregon State head coach Jonathan Smith said it best when describing the decision to attempt a fake field goal to close out the first half against Arizona.

"It was a bad call," he said.

A bad call indeed as the Beavers missed an easy opportunity for three points and coincidentally, three points were the difference in this matchup.

I'll preface this by saying, being aggressive is in Smith's DNA. He's built it into the program's identity and it has worked out for the Beavers more times than not.

However, there's a fine line between aggression and gambling and Smith took an ill-advised gamble that potentially cost the Beavers a chance at a huge victory.

With the game, all knotted up at 10 and the clock winding down before the end of the first half, the Beavers lined up for a field goal attempt from the 16-yard line with three seconds remaining.

After Arizona called a timeout, the Beavers proceeded to run a fake field goal where holder and punter Josh Green flipped the snap to an in-motion Atticus Sappington who was looking to take it and run off to the left side of the line, where the Beavers, per Smith, felt they had an advantage.

I won't argue with the advantage part, if you go back and look at the play, there's a running lane there and it's blocked well, but Sappington isn't exactly fleet of foot and why would you run that with no chance of having another play to run? It just doesn't add up and that's where Smith's words ring true.

While it's easy to look at the final score and say this contest was won/lost on this play, that's still not the case. The game was much more than this single play, but when you consider that it was extremely preventable and a big coaching blunder, it looms large.

Entering this matchup, all the talk during the bye week was about Oregon State tightening up the details and getting everything in order before the stretch run of the season.

While the Beavers had a loss to Washington State on the resume, and one that unfortunately looks worse each week, that wasn't a massive detriment as the Beavers were No. 11 in the country and boasted a three-game win streak with two of those wins coming over ranked teams.

The matchups against Arizona, Colorado, and Stanford featured challenges, but you figured if Oregon State was truly a team capable of competing for the league title they'd get three wins and set up massive, winner-take-all games against Washington and Oregon to close out the regular season.

While Arizona was the toughest challenge of the above trio, it may have answered the question about Oregon State at this point in the season.

The Beavers are a good team, but greatness still eludes them.

That's not to say it still cannot be done this season (more on that in takeaway No. 10), but the margin for error is now absolute zero and that's a daunting task with what remains on the schedule.

Oregon State had Pac-12 Championship aspirations this season, it's what they talked about all preseason long. It's why guys like Kitan Oladapo, James Rawls, Isaac Hodgins, and others returned for another season after coming up just short a season ago, and now they're precariously close to being in the same spot as a year ago.

There's a lot of football left to be played, and you truly never know what's going to happen in this league week in and week out, but tonight's loss to Arizona proved Oregon State isn't among the Pac-12's top-tier elite at the moment.

The Beavers made too many mistakes and weren't nearly consistent enough on both sides to get the road win against a plucky and tough Arizona squad, and that's why they came up short.

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