First Oregon tried to give it away against Washington State, then the Ducks proved incapable of defending the Cougars.
Keeshawn Barthelemy scored 15 of his 17 points in the second half and gave UO the lead with 4:16 to go, but Justin Powell had five of his 11 in the final 3:26 to close out a 68-65 win for the Cougars over the Ducks Sunday night at Beasley Coliseum.
It was the third straight loss for Oregon (15-13, 9-8 Pac-12), which falls to 5-5 in Quadrant 2 games and 8-12 combined in Q1 and Q2 games.
UO led 30-27 at halftime despite 10 turnovers before the break because Washington State shot a terrible 29.4% from the field in the first half.
Mouhamed Gueye had 18 points and 12 rebounds for Washington State (13-15, 8-9), which shot 58.6% from the field, including 58.3% from three, during the second half to notch its second-best win of the season.
“Start of the second half we gave up way too many easy shots,” Oregon coach Dana Altman said on postgame radio. “The game kind of flipped on us again. We did such a good job the first half of contesting shots; we gave them two open threes and they hit both of them but they were 2 for 11. Second half they go 7 for 12 and all but one was easy looks. Complete change there defensively and that’s what beat us.”
Gueye was a perfect 4 for 4 from the floor after the break and played 39 minutes on the night. TJ Bamba had 11 points and four rebounds and Andrej Jakimovski added 10 points and five rebounds for Wazzu, which won its third straight in Pullman over UO.
Jermaine Couisnard had 12 points and N’Faly Dante had 10 points and 11 rebounds for Oregon, which was swept at the Washington schools for the first time since 2014-15.
