Bubble trouble?
Top-seeded Washington is stunned by Oregon State and could find itself on the
outside looking in Sunday.
The bubble of teams left hoping for an NCAA tournament berth got a little larger Thursday when the Pac-12 Conference’s regular-season champion was added to the list.
Top-seeded Washington was upset by ninth-seeded Oregon State, 86-84, in a quarterfinal game of the Pacific Life Pac-12 tournament at Staples Center, a result that took a considerable amount of luster off a team that had been considered a shoo-in for at least an atlarge berth.
“I would think the Pac-12 champion would be able to find a place in the NCAA tournament,” Huskies Coach Lorenzo Romar said after the game. “We certainly didn’t help ourselves today, but I would think we’d be able to find ourselves in there.”
The Huskies (21-10) trailed by 15 points early in the second half, rallied to lead by as many as eight points with less than nine minutes left, then couldn’t hit a free throw or make any kind of other play in the final minute as Oregon State’s Jared Cunningham did just enough to lift his team to victory.
Cunningham finished with 18 points, 10 rebounds and eight assists. His driving layup from along the left baseline with 31.8 seconds left put the Beavers ahead, 84-83, and his two free throws with 6.2 seconds left made the score 86-83.
“I didn’t make as many shots as I wanted,” said Cunningham, who made six of 15, “but I passed the ball really well and got everybody involved and they held their part. In the end, I had to make those free throws to help us.”
However, even the star of the game was far from perfect. Cunningham missed a pair of free throws with 17.5 seconds left and two more with 2.3 seconds remaining that would have allowed the Beavers (19-13) to breathe easier.
Fortunately for Oregon State, there was no such thing as a “free” throw in the game’s final half minute.
Tony Wroten finished with a Washington freshman-record 29 points, but misfired on four free throws in the final 18.3 seconds.
Wroten, a 57.6% freethrow shooter on the season, had made nine of 11 in the game to that point. As a team, Washington made only 12 of 26 free throws (46.2%). Oregon State was only slightly better, making 17 of 32 (53.1%).
California 77, Stanford 71: The Bears (24-8) got a little payback after a loss Sunday to the Cardinal (21-11), but it took some work.
California’s Jorge Gutierrez, the Pac-12 player of the year, scored 19 of his teamhigh 22 points in the second half. He had six during a 13-3 run that wiped out Stanford’s 30-23 lead at halftime. Gutierrez had six more during an 11-2 run that gave the Bears a 73-64 lead with 2:30 left.
The Cardinal denied the Bears a piece of the regularseason conference title with a 75-70 victory in Palo Alto.
Asked how long it took to get over that game, California’s Harper Kamp said, “I was kind of out of it until probably halftime today. About 3 a.m. Tuesday morning, I finally stopped sulking and realized we got another season. … It was likely we were going to get another shot at Stanford. So there was no room for sulking.”
Stanford’s Chasson Randle scored 30 points in a first-round victory over Arizona State on Wednesday. He had 19 points Thursday, but made only five of 16 shots. Randle made his first shot, a three-pointer, to give Stanford a 6-4 lead. He made his next field goal with 3:33 left in the half.
Andrew Zimmermann led Stanford with 22 points.
Colorado 63, Oregon 62: Andre Roberson’s rebound and layup gave the Buffaloes (21-11) the lead with 13 seconds left. The Ducks’ Devoe Joseph had a chance to win the game, but missed badly on a three-point try at the buzzer
After Askia Booker’s jumper gave Colorado a 5850 lead with 7:28 left, the Buffaloes went more than five minutes without scoring. Carlos Emory’s layup finished off a 10-0 run to give Oregon (22-9) a 60-58 lead.