Beavers give Bears a scare
Ryan Anderson scored 22 points to become the first sophomore at California to reach the 1,000-point mark, leading the Golden Bears to a 81-76 victory over Oregon State on Thursday night.
The win was not nearly as easy as expected for the Golden Bears (14-7, 5-5 Pac-10), who returned home fresh off a sweep at Washington State and Washington last weekend to face a Beavers team looking for its first conference win of the season.
But Oregon State (6-16, 0-10) managed to make this one tough for Cal before losing its 12th straight game. Marcel Jones’ three-point play midway through the second half capped a 9-1 run that gave the Beavers a 62-60 lead.
The game remained tight until Nikola Knezevic hit a 3-pointer from the corner with 2:16 to go to make it 73-68. Cal scored the next five points to put it away.
Calvin Hampton missed a front-end of a one-and-one and Josh Tarver missed a 3-pointer on Oregon State’s previous two possessions with the Beavers down by just two points.
Oregon State went more than 4 minutes without scoring down the stretch before Tarver’s 3-pointer made it 78-71 with 42.3 seconds to go. Omari Johnson added another 3 to cut it to four with 31 seconds left, but Anderson hit two free throws to get the lead back up to six.
Anderson reached the 1,000-point milestone by making one of two free throws with 10:53 remaining in the game to give Cal a 59-53 lead. Ed Gray and Mark McNamara each scored more than 1,000 points in their first two seasons at Cal, but both of those players arrived as transfers instead of freshmen.
Anderson, who leads the Pac-10 in scoring at 22.1 points per game, added 12 rebounds in his 13th 20-point game of the season.
DeVon Hardin, who missed last weekend’s trip to Washington with a viral infection, came off the bench this game and had nine points and three rebounds. Jamal Boykin started in his place and did well once again, scoring Cal’s first seven points of the game and finishing with 13 points and eight boards.
Patrick Christopher added 15 points and Jerome Randle had 11 for Cal, which won for the 25th time in 28 meetings with Oregon State.
Johnson led the Beavers with 16 points, Jones added 15 and Lathen Wallace had 10.
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