OSU women's basketball has best start since 2018-19: How surging No. 17 Beavers got here
Though the No. 17 Oregon State women’s basketball team had a couple of relatively down years, including last season’s 13-18 campaign, the Beavers are back near the top of the Pac-12 standings in the conference’s final season.
As of Tuesday, the Beavers (18-3, 7-3 Pac-12) are squarely in third place in the conference standings and would receive a first-round bye if things held up as one of the top four teams.
Last weekend, the Beavers took down the Oregon Ducks for the second time, sweeping the regular season series for the first time since the 2016-17 season.
Led by Raegan Beers, who is recording 18.5 points and 11.2 rebounds per game, Oregon State has one of the most balanced scoring attacks in the Pac-12 and a ferocious defense. Guard Talia von Oelhoffen is second on the team in points per game with 10.6, but also averages over five assists and 4.5 rebounds per game. As a team, the Beavers shoot 48.1% from the field and 36.3% from deep, while holding opponents to 34.6% shooting from the field and 27.8% from 3-point land.
At No. 17 in the AP Poll, the Beavers could make even more noise during the final stretch of the season and crack a top four seed at the NCAA tournament. OSU ranks No. 21 in the NET (NCAA Evaluation Tool) rankings – which measure a team’s quality and help evaluate team resumes for selection into the tournament. NET ranking is determined by who, where and how efficiently you played, and the result of the games.
In ESPN’s latest bracketology released Tuesday, Oregon State is a No. 5 seed.
How has Oregon State done this season?
The Beavers breezed through a relatively easy nonconference slate, with just one Power Five opponent in Texas Tech. Still, OSU defeated every opponent during the nonconference season by double digits save for Villanova (a 63-56 win in the second game of the season).
After defeating the Ducks for the first time in their conference opener on New Year’s Eve, the Beavers suffered their first setback of the season. Oregon State dropped both of its road matchups to the Los Angeles schools – a 2-point defeat to USC and a 65-54 defeat to UCLA.
Since that pair of defeats, the Beavers have been one of the hottest teams in college basketball.
They rattled off three straight wins before losing to No. 6 Stanford on the road, then winning three more in a row.
Before dispatching Oregon for the second time this season last weekend, the Beavers defeated No. 4 Colorado and No. 20 Utah in Corvallis, their first ranked wins of the season.
What’s left for the Beavers?
One of the toughest conference slates in the country, the Beavers play four more ranked teams in a row, and five of their last eight games are against top-20 teams.
First up are the mountain schools for the second time in three weekends, then the Los Angeles schools the following weekend, the Washington schools the week after that, and the Bay Area schools to finish the regular season.
The Pac-12 Tournament begins March 6 in Las Vegas.
Alec Dietz covers University of Oregon football, volleyball, women’s basketball and baseball for The Register-Guard. You may reach him at adietz@registerguard.com and you can follow him on Twitter @AlecDietz.
This article originally appeared on Register-Guard: Pac-12 women's basketball: What to know for surging OSU Beavers
