Salt Lake City – The University of Utah Men’s basketball team grabbed their first conference win of the season Saturday by beating the Oregon State Beavers 80-69. The Huntsman Center was packed with just over 14,000 fans to see Brandon Taylor score a career high 23 points on 7-of-9 shooting and dish out eight assists. Delon Wright once again had an all around performance with 14 points, six assists, three blocks, and two steals. Jordan Loveridge scored 10 points with five rebounds on an afternoon where his 3 of 8 shooting wasn’t a problem as the team shot 58 percent from the field and seemed to hit every shot it threw up to make up the difference.
Oregon State shot lights out also shooting 50 percent but the big difference was the Beavers had 15 turn overs while Utah only had eight. Oregon State seemed to have a game plan of keeping the ball out of the hands of Loveridge and Wright and Taylor really responded. The Utes looked to take the open shot where against the Ducks it looked like the poor shooting was causing the Utes to pass on open shots until the clock was low enough the shot had to be taken.
Utah center Jeremy Olsen added 14 points and played 24 minutes as a starter replacing Renan Lenz as the normal starter. Dakarai Tucker scored 14 points to round out the Utah starters which all scored in double figures. Dallin Bachynski played the most for the Utah bench at 16 minutes but the Utah bench only contributed a total of 6 points.
For Oregon State, they were led by guard Roberto Nelson scoring 16 points while the bench came up big with Hallice Cooke dropping in 14 and Langs Morris-Walker scoring 11. The Beavers went eight deep into their bench.
Next up for the Utes is only their second road game of the season. They take on the Washington Huskies Wednesday at 9:00 MDT. The schedule for all sports covered by Utah Sporting News can be found by viewing the calendar.
Utah Basketball Downs Oregon State 80-69 in Pictures