Oregon State Basketball is rolling

I didn't get to see any of the scrimmages or the first game. So my first look at the hoops squad was last night in their final exhibition game against Lewis & Clark. They made us look very good. It wasn't just the starters either, but everybody looked good. I was especially impressed with some of the new guys. Jack McGillis was hitting three and playing very confidently. Brett Casey was playing backup point guard and handled their full court pressure very well. Calvin Hampton was solid on D and on the boards. It looks like he could get some decent minutes backing up the big men for OSU.

There wasn't too much not to like, so I'll touch on a few of the things that were good to see. Lamar Hurd was more aggressive and looked to take his shot more often. Sasa Cuic had some fire and looked more aggressive on the boards than he was last year. Stephens was looking to score a lot and was driving to the basket a lot like he did a couple of years ago. We need him to be a scorer. Angelo looked aggressive, but in control. He passed up 3's a couple of times to drive it to the hole. Also, he only took one shot that was more than a foot away from the 3 point line. I think he stepped up his game.

It's still unclear exactly what this team will be like this year, but they ran a ton and all could shoot so it could be a very good year.

One more side note, they were using an international 3 point line and key so a lot of the 3's the guys made turned into 2's. So in a real game the score would have probably been about 5-10 points higher.

Corvallis Gazette-Times: Easy victory for the Beavers

OSUBeavers.com: OSU Pounds Lewis & Clark, 110-63

(Jay John on how the team’s depth past the first six looks) “I don’t know. Marcel’s proven himself, certainly. Angelo is going to be there, I mean he’s a player. So Marcel and Angelo have certainly stepped up, and then from there Brett did a nice job forcing turnovers. And then the young guys got some minutes, and they got to go hard. Calvin, Liam, Jack and Mike, it’s a new experience for them to get game-style minutes. Everybody’s going to keep improving as long as they have the mindset that they’ll go hard all the time.”

The Oregonian: Oregon State 110, Lewis & Clark 63 Stephens leads Beavers in final exhibition