For the third straight game, the Arizona women’s basketball team was defeated by a top 10 team. This time it was a one-sided 71-43 loss to the No. 9 Oregon State Beavers Friday night in Gill Coliseum in Corvallis, Oregon.
The Wildcats (11-10 overall, 2-7 Pac-12 Conference) have now lost three games in a row and six of their last seven. Meanwhile, it’s the seventh win in a row for the Beavers (17-3 overall, 8-1 Pac-12 Conference).
Oregon State would jump out to an early 9-4 lead after a Katie McWilliams 3-pointer, but the Wildcats would cut OSU’s lead to 13-12 with 3:57 left in the first quarter after Arizona forward Destiny Graham intercepted a pass and went coast-to-coast for the score.
But Oregon State would never trail in the game and Arizona wouldn’t hang around for long.
A pair of 3-pointers by Sydney Wiese and Deven Hunter helped the Beavers finish the first quarter on a 10-0 run to put them up 23-12. Wiese would have a game-high 15 points and 11 rebounds, while Hunter would finish with 12 points herself.
The 3-pointers would continue to fly for Oregon State in the second quarter.
Taylor Kalmer, Wiese and Hunter would hit back-to-back-to-back 3-pointers late in the quarter to put Oregon State up 42-17 with just under two minutes left in the half.
“It felt so good to be back out there with my teammates,” Wiese told Pac-12 Networks. “To be able to get back out there and give [the fans] a show out there tonight was a lot of fun for us.”
Wiese made her first start since December.
It was a first-half offensive flurry for the Beavers. They would shoot 57 percent in the first two quarters and finish the half on a 30-5 run to take a 47-19 lead into halftime.
Oregon State’s ball movement was crisp all night and Arizona had no answer. Seventeen of the Beavers’ 27 made field goals were assisted on and it resulted it in easy baskets inside and open looks on the perimeter. The Beavers hit nine 3-pointers, with seven of them coming in the first half.
The Wildcats, on the other hand, hit just one of their five 3-point attempts and the Beavers’ size advantage in the middle allowed them to control the paint. They outrebounded the Wildcats 44-32 and outscored them in the paint 30-14.
With a perimeter game lacking and the team struggling to get anything going to the rim, the Wildcats were held to a 29.6 field goal percentage.
“Arizona’s a really talented team,” Wiese said. “They like to pull up for jump shots and we were really focused on taking those away from them and making them uncomfortable, and I thought we did a great job defensively tonight.”
LaBrittney Jones led Arizona in scoring with 10 points and Malena Washington had eight of her own.
Arizona would match Oregon State point-for-point in the second half, but with the Beavers already possessing a sizable lead because of their explosive first-half offense, they were able to cruise to a comfortable 28-point win.
The Wildcats will look to snap their losing streak against the Oregon Ducks Sunday in the Matthew Knight Arena in Eugene, Oregon.
Tipoff is at 1 p.m.
