Oregon State basketball falls at Seattle

Oregon State’s three-game road winning streak ended with a significant missed opportunity.

Matija Samar scored 14 points and Jorge Diaz Graham had 12 in a 60-50 Beavers loss at Seattle Sunday night at Redhawk Center.

“What was really disappointing is we reverted back to things that have cost us in the past‚” Oregon State coach Wayne Tinkle said on postgame radio. “No toughness on the boards. We got our butts kicked and we couldn’t finish. Guard play — we kept putting our hands in the air looking for fouls and we’re turning it over.”

OSU’s starters combined to score 13 points on 6 of 26 shooting from the field, including 0 for 10 from three. Josiah Lake II scored three points on 1 of 8 shooting and made 1 of 3 free throws.

“You can’t have so many guys no-show on either end,” Tinkle said. “I love the fact that we finally found a group that thought it was important and actually played hard and shared it. Shame on us for the rest that weren’t ready to play that way.”

The loss moves Oregon State (14-14, 7-8 WCC) into a tie for fifth in the conference with three games left in the regular season. Though OSU is just one game behind fourth-place Pacific, the Tigers have the tiebreaker.

The Beavers shot just 29.2% from the field in the first half and trailed 36-18 at halftime.

That was more than enough cushion for Seattle (16-11, 5-9), which got 16 points from John Christofilis and 15 points and nine rebounds from Will Heimbrodt.

Diaz Graham scored 10 points and had five of his six rebounds and Samar scored nine points in the second half to help Oregon State cut a 23-point deficit down to 51-42 with 7:00 to go, but it would not get any closer.

“(Samar) played spirited,” Tinkle said. “He showed some fight and some fire. It’s too bad that we didn’t get other guys to follow suit.”

It was the lone remaining Quadrant 2 game for OSU, which hosts last place Pepperdine on Saturday.

Jojo Murphy had 11 points, five rebounds and three assists and Houran Dan had 10 points for the Redhawks, who never trailed and evened the season series. Seattle moved into a tie for ninth place in the WCC.