OSU shoots poorly, falls to USC in L.A.

Published 4:00 am Friday, February 11, 2011

LOS ANGELES — USC coach Kevin O’Neill knows his team’s offense isn’t a thing of beauty.

But he’ll take a win — no matter how ugly — any day of the week.

Nikola Vucevic had 17 points and 10 rebounds as USC snapped a three-game losing streak to Oregon State with a 67-56 victory on Thursday night.

“We’re a nightmare in transition; we’ve got the balls bouncing off our heads and our legs and our arms,” O’Neill quipped. “I can’t believe some of the stuff I see sometimes, but the one thing I did like is we hustled, we played hard, we defended, we rebounded and we won the game.”

Donte Smith had 13 points and made several clutch three-pointers for the Trojans (13-11, 5-6 Pac-10).

The Beavers (9-14, 4-8) made just one of 11 three-pointers and had 19 turnovers. Leading scorer Jared Cunningham, who had a career-high 24 points against USC on Jan. 15, finished with 11 and was the only Oregon State player in double figures. Omari Johnson had seven points and 10 rebounds for Oregon State.

Oregon State head coach Craig Robinson had no explanation for the team’s turnover total, its highest since Dec. 18, when the Beavers had 20 in a loss against George Washington.

“We haven’t had a game like that in a very long time. USC does a good job on defense, but they pack it in, so a lot of those were unforced errors,” Robinson said.

The Beavers entered Thursday leading the nation with 10.1 steals per game. They had nine against USC, but scored only 10 points off the Trojans’ turnovers.

“We actually were playing good defense, then stole the ball, came down and missed the layup or threw the ball away,” Robinson said. “On the road, you can’t afford that.”

O’Neill credited his players with preventing Oregon State from capitalizing on their mistakes.

“We played unbelievable hustle defense after turnovers; we call it turnover defense,” O’Neill said. “If they’re converting all those, those are crusher plays if they go in and lay it in, so to not give up on the play is obviously very important.”

Also on Thursday:

St. John’s 89

No. 10 Connecticut 72

NEW YORK — Dwight Hardy scored a career-high 33 points and St. John’s (14-9, 6-5 Big East) took command in the second half in a victory over Connecticut, the Red Storm’s fourth win over a top-13 team this season at Madison Square Garden.

No. 23 Vanderbilt 81

Alabama 77

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Brad Tinsley made an off-balanced 17-footer as he was fouled with 17 seconds left and converted the three-point play to spell the difference for Vanderbilt (17-6, 5-4 Southeastern Conference).

Stanford 75

Washington State 62

PULLMAN, Wash. — Jeremy Green scored 24 points to lead Stanford (13-10, 6-6 Pac-10) past Washington State (16-8, 6-6).

Washington 109

California 77

SEATTLE — Isaiah Thomas made a career-high six three-pointers en route to 23 points, Matthew Bryan-Amaning added 18 and Washington (16-7, 8-4 Pac-10) emphatically snapped its three-game losing streak with a rout of California (13-11, 7-5).