Oregon State Beavers rundown: Back to business for OSU as Pac ...
It's quickly down to business for the Beavers, who open Pac-12 play Thursday night in Seattle against the Washington Huskies - a matchup of the top two scoring teams in the league (OSU leads at 83.4 points; the Huskies are scoring 79.7).
The Beavers are tied with Stanford at 10-2 and atop the Pac-12 standings, off to their best start in 22 years. You have to go down to ninth place to find the Huskies at 6-5.
Washington is coming off a 23-point win over CSU Northridge, a much-needed bounce-back from a shocking loss to South Dakota State.
The Huskies should have 7-footer Aziz N'Diaye, who played 16 minutes against Northridge in his first action since suffering a sprained his knee in an 86-80 loss to Duke on Dec. 10.
His absence has been very noticeable. Without the eraser inside, Washington is at the bottom of the Pac-12 in scoring defense (74.0 points a game).
And N'Diaye is the biggest pounder of the offensive boards on a team that always does just that. Once again, the Huskies lead the Pac-12 in offensive rebounds (14.4 per game), something that could really hurt the Beavers.
OSU does lead the league in a bunch of categories, heading into conference play: scoring, scoring margin (+18.6), field goal percentage (49.6), assists (18.3), steals (10.4) and turnover margin (+5.4).
Jared Cunningham still leads the Pac-12 in scoring (16.8 points) as Washington has three of the league's top eight scorers in freshman Tony Wroten, Portlander Terrence Ross and C.J. Wilcox.
Angus Brandt (66.7 percent) and Devon Collier (65.7) are 1-2 in field goal percentage. Cunningham (3.0) and Ahmad Starks (2.8) are 1-2 in steals.
None other than Dickie V. lists Oregon State among his top eight surprise teams so far.
The top 10 plays from the non-conference season (Cunningham makes an appearance or two).
Cunningham is the Pac-12 POY so far, at least in the eyes of Huskies beat guy Percy Allen.
OSU doesn't have Chris Brown around anymore.
The Beavers picked up a verbal from a four-star (Rivals) cornerback, Devian Shelton of Inglewood, Calif. The commitment, though, isn't going to keep Shelton from visiting Nebraska and Washington State next month.
The return of Matt Barkley to USC for 2012 is only going to make the Trojans more valuable. Fortunately for Oregon State, USC does not appear on the 2012 schedule.
How much help do the Beavers need at defensive tackle? They obviously need more help on the offensive line and have addressed that. But what new DTs can the Beavers throw into the mix?
And finally, for Oregon State football, 2011 was a year to forget, for a variety of reasons.
- John Hunt
Source: http://www.oregonlive.com/beavers/index.ssf/2011/12/oregon_state_beavers_rundown_39.html
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