There is no doubt that the worst Power Five Conference team is college basketball. Oregon State has a 3-22 record. It's ugly on paper and things look even worse when you look at the fecal matter. OSU has one win over a high-level conference team, hasn't won outside of the season, and is currently on a 12-game losing streak.
The only win against a well-known conference team was the one against Utah, which is 4-13 in league play. In the team's season opener against Portland State, the team won by 22 points. Oregon State has a season-best two-game win streak. People are taking baby steps.
The win over the Colonels should put an end to the longest losing streak of the season. The search for victory No. 4 is still going on. On Friday was the 49th day of the year. The look for a break continued after the road loss to Arizona. At the half, the Beavers trailed by a bucket. Even when it plays well, the OSU team loses by double digits. On Saturday, Oregon State lost to Arizona State by 20.
Oregon State is in a place of misery. A little over a year ago, the Beavers were playing in the Elite Eight. It's a valid argument that they had to win a lackluster Pac-12 Tournament to get into the Indianapolis bubble marathon. March Madness is still a part of the NCAA Tournament. There is sarcasm when games are played in those scenarios. Oregon State lost to Houston six points away from the Final Four. The number of games won by the Beavers is the same as they have this season.
The start of the win-or-go- home journey for Oregon State began with a win over UCLA, which the Bruins nearly bounced from The Big Dance before they went from the First Four to the Final Four. The Loyola-Chicago team that was outclassed by Illinois in the first weekend of the tournament was defeated by Oregon State in the Sweet 16. The Tennessee and Oklahoma State games were both won by double digits.
The OSU squad sounds completely different this year. It's possible that Wayne Tinkle got the wrong combination of players to mesh at a high level. Seven players from last season still apply their trade in Corvallis, despite the fact that an eight-player rotation is needed to be successful in a major conference. Division-I teams can only have 13 scholarship players a year.
The current nosedive isn't the first at Oregon State. Oregon State finished 1-17 in conference play in the year after the only other NCAA Tournament appearance of his tenure. Even if the Beavers finish worse than that in the conference, they still need two more wins over the next few weeks to reach that five-win threshold. Do you know how hard it is to win five games in a college basketball season? Most schools schedule a lot of mid-major games at home. Oregon State lost to schools like UC Davis. Tinkle's teams won at least 16 games every season between the two outliers.
Every other high-level conference team has double Oregon State's win total, with Georgia's six-win season, another miserable failure for former Indiana head coach Tom Crean, as the second-lowest total for a team from the Power Five. Oregon State fell to No.235 on KenPom after Thursday's loss, but the Bulldogs are still ahead of them. At a neutral site, the powerhouses of Northern Colorado and Kennesaw State would be the favorites. A season of misery.
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