The college basketball season is a long grind.

Even before playing their first game, players have put in hours upon hours of time in the gym either in practice or working individually on improving their game.

Once games start, the focus typically turns to the next opponent and preparing for the nuances of a variety of game plans.

So when you get a chance to take a step back, it’s not such a bad thing.

That’s what the Oregon State men’s basketball team is doing as they are in the middle of eight days without a game.

After Saturday afternoon’s thrilling 74-71 win over a solid Utah Valley team, the Beavers had more than a week before taking the court for their next contest.

That comes at noon on Sunday against the University of Texas at San Antonio.

The break comes at a good time as it is finals week for the players.

“Yeah, I mean, it’s time to maybe reset a little bit physically and mentally,” coach Wayne Tinkle said Saturday. “Obviously, we’ve got to make a push academically, take care of business there.

“… We’ve been going at it for basically two and a half months now so some rest and recovery in the middle of week, and then really make a push on the latter part of the week in our prep for our next opponent.”

Tinkle did say there is the thought of potentially scheduling a game in the middle of finals week, but that didn’t happen this year.

“I kind of like how this is setting up,” he said. “They can handle the business in the classroom, we’ll give them a couple of days in the middle of week to really get fresh, and then clear the mechanism as we get closer to the weekend and prepare for our next opponent and try to keep the momentum going.”

The Beavers have played nine games with five of the six turning out to be hard-fought battles to the end. That included Saturday’s win.

The Beavers have gone to overtime three times — double overtime twice — and two others have been down to the wire.

Fortunately for the Beavers, they have pulled them all out.

They have fallen behind at the half in six straight games, rallying to win the last three at home.

So do the players enjoy all these nip-and-tuck affairs?

Of course, they want to play well enough that the game is in hand without having to sweat it out. But being in tight and intense games could play to their advantage when they head into the Pac-12 season.

“But it just shows that our team battles and I think we get through it. We were down to a good team and we just fought our way back,” Tyler Bilodeau said of Saturday’s win.

Pope said it was less than ideal but “given that we put ourselves in this situation, I think it will end up being good for us in the long run with so many battle-tested games and being able to execute through the game and come out on top.”

Tinkle has mentioned several times in postgame media availability that the Beavers need to have a better start to games, have that-in-the foxhole mentality from the jump instead of waiting to the second half of games.

At least on Saturday, there was no fire and brimstone lecture during the break. It was actually a pretty simple fix, Tinkle said.

He said the team was selfish at times with the ball, took some bad shots, dribbled into trouble too often and turned it over. And they let Tanner Toolson light it up for 14 points.

“So it was more just getting guys back on page,” Tinkle said, “because we’ve learned enough lessons here (that) when the ball sticks, we struggle offensively. When we move it, when we execute and play … that was the difference in the second half.”