By Daniel Martinez-Krams on February 8, 2019

Facing the conference’s second best team on the road, Stanford men’s basketball (12-10, 5-5 Pac-12) put forth an impressive 83-60 wire-to-wire victory over Oregon State (14-8, 6-4 Pac-12) for the Cardinal’s fourth straight win in the series. Coming off their first road conference sweep in over a decade, at the expense of Utah and Colorado, the Beavers were handed their worst loss of the season.

“I don’t know if we’re reading social media, press clippings,” said Oregon State head coach Wayne Tinkle, “but we’ve got to get back to where we’re playing Beaver basketball.”

Stanford jumped out to an early lead and were up by as much as 19 points before heading into halftime with a 48-35 scoring line. Sophomore forward Oscar da Silva tied his career high with 23 points while shooting a blistering nine of twelve from the field. Flirting with a triple double, da Silva added nine rebounds and seven assists, leading the Cardinal in all three categories.

The Beavers went eight minutes in the second half without hitting a field goal. During that span, Stanford extended its lead from nine points to 17, capped by a Sheffield three. “We had a great opportunity tonight, and Stanford came in and did a woodshed job on us,” said Wayne Tinkle.

Despite sitting for substantial stretches of the game in foul trouble, senior center Josh Sharma contributed 20 points on eight of 10 shooting to go along with eight rebounds.

Coming off a career high thirty points in a road win over Cal, sophomore forward KZ Okpala was much quieter with ten points on just two of nine shooting. Okpala, shooting 68.5 percent from the free throw line, was perfect on six attempts from the charity stripe.

Sophomore guard Daejon Davis played only 13 minutes due to (a potential head injury), but scored 11 points while sinking all three of his three-point attempts. Freshman Cormac Ryan played 32 minutes in Davis’ absence, hitting only one of his five threes but tallying six points and seven rebounds.

As a team, the Cardinal were lights out from behind the arc, shooting an uncanny 53 percent. Redshirt junior guard Marcus Sheffield hit both of his three-point attempts, and finished with an efficient eight points in eight minutes. Meanwhile, Oregon State was one for 12 from range.

Stanford dominated not only on the perimeter, but inside as well, outworking the Beavers on the glass 41-26. “The got everything around the hoop,” said Beavers forward Tres Tinkle. “They didn’t really have to work for their points.”

The Cardinal held the Beavers to 14 points below their season average, and scored 13 more points than their hosts typically allow. Much of that owes to limiting the conference’s second leading scorer and reigning Pac-12 Player of the Week Tres Tinkle to 15 points on a paltry six of 18 shooting. All five of Oregon State’s starters were held below their season averages.

Stanford will stick around in Oregon until Sunday to take on the Ducks (14-9, 5-5 Pac-12) in a nationally televised game. The teams are currently tied for sixth place in the Pac-12. Oregon will be coming off of a win over Cal in which Payton Richard secured a double double on 20 points and 10 rebounds.

Contact Daniel Martinez-Krams at danielmk ‘at’ stanford.edu.