Oregon State Basketball: 2018-19 season preview for the Beavers
Oregon State Basketball doesn’t have much of a post-season pedigree. Could they begin to change that in 2018-19? Here is a look at what the Beavers look like.
It has been a long time since the Oregon State Beavers have been thought of as a potential at-large team for the NCAA Tournament. Yes, they made the dance as a No. 7 seed in 2016 where they fell to No. 10 VCU in the first round, but even then, they finished at 19-13 and 9-9 in the Pac-12, hardly a lock, and that was their first berth since 1990.
Last year the Beavers struggled to a 10th place finish in the conference with a 7-11 record under head coach Wayne Tinkle. A closer look at the team’s results last season, perhaps the Beavers weren’t as bad as the conference record would indicate. Of the team’s 11 league defeats, nine were by single digits and another was a 10-point overtime loss to Arizona. In the losses, the margin of victory was just 5.6 points, while in the team’s seven wins the margin was over 14 points.
For a team that was so close in many of its games only to come out on the losing end, 2018-19 could give us a glimpse as to how mentally tough Tinkle and his team is, and whether they can learn from the struggles of last season and turn some of those tough losses into victories.