1/15/2020 basketball Edit

Oregon State WBB: Wednesday Report

Brenden Slaughter • BeaversEdge

Publisher

Following its first loss of the season to Arizona State, the No. 8 Oregon State women's basketball team (15-1, 3-1 Pac-12) is set to return home to Gill Coliseum for matchups with Cal (8-7, 0-4) and No. 3 Stanford (15-1, 4-0). BeaversEdge.com was live in Corvallis and has the latest on the Beavers as they prepare for another tough week of conference play.

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After dropping its first game of the season on the road against Arizona State last Sunday, the No. 8 Oregon State women's basketball team (15-1, 3-1) is squarely focused on putting the loss in the rearview mirror as the schedule will only be tougher from here.

Over the next two weeks, the Beavers will face No. 3 Stanford, Cal, and No. 6 Oregon (twice). That means that three of OSU's next four matchups will come against teams ranked in the AP top-10.

"We've got to take it one game at a time," Mikayla Pivec said. "We don't try and anticipate opponents, but rather take them as they come."

Despite the Beavers dropping their first game of the season to Arizona State, head coach Scott Rueck was pleased with the fight that the team showed in the second half even though they weren't able to fully complete the comeback.

"We couldn't get comfortable in the first half," Rueck said. "I loved our fight in the second half because we fought really hard to get back in the game. But credit to ASU for making plays down the stretch. It was just one of those days where you pray your defense is good enough to keep you in it... With two and a half minutes left, were nearly able to steal the game down the stretch, but it just didn't happen."

Against the Sun Devils, the Beavers couldn't throw it in the ocean as they shot just 31% from the field and 10% from three. For a team that averages 48% and 36% in those respective categories, it was a steep decline that can perhaps be written off as a poor shooting night.

"We don't have many games where nobody is shooting well," Aleah Goodman said. "We know that when threes aren't falling, we have to be able to get to the rim and do other things. We saw it in spurts in the second half, but we've got to start that earlier and get more consistent."

Pivec, who is coming off a tough performance against ASU where she made several critical mistakes down the stretch, feels that the loss will only fuel the team moving forward.

"The whole game was frustrating offensively," Pivec said. "I made some poor decisions down the stretch and turned the ball over several times in critical moments. We'll learn from it and be better moving forward."

The Beavers will certainly be looking to get rid of the bad taste of the Arizona State loss this weekend in Gill Coliseum, but it won't come easy as both Cal and No. 3 Stanford present numerous challenges.

"Cal is a very tough and battle-tested coming off their series against Stanford," Rueck said. "They'll be excited to play up here and it's always a tough battle with them as they play very physical on the inside and are tough on the boards. That'll be a good challenge for us after this past weekend."

It's certainly a plus that the Beavers play Cal before Stanford as the Bears are a better bounce-back opponent than the daunting Cardinal, but there's no doubt the Beavers will be tested this weekend.

"It's going to be a very tough stretch where we're going to be tested," Goodman said. "We've got to be sharp and focused on our preparation. It's going to be one of the hardest tests of our season."