The Barometer Online

Issue date: 3/11/09 Section: Sports

Media Credit: Cory Reed Junior Seth Tarver was named Pac-10 All-Defensive Team Honorable Mention. Tarver and the Beavers play Stanford tonight on FSN.

The Oregon State men's basketball team will be playing to keep on playing this week as the Beavers roll into Los Angeles to take on Stanford in the first round of the Pac-10 tournament.

The Beavers have beaten Stanford twice already this year and will be going for three straight against the Cardinal as the team looks to make its first trip to the postseason since 2005.

"In basketball, it's very hard to beat a team in the same season three times in a row," head coach Craig Robinson said. "Having said that, if you have to pick teams you have to play, you want to play somebody you've beaten, so we're just going to continue to do what we've done in the past against them and hopefully it will work out."

The Beavers have come up with two double-digit wins against Stanford already this year, and although the Cardinal are coming off a game in which they gave up 101 points in a loss to Arizona, they earned upset wins in the two games prior to that against Arizona State and USC, so Stanford isn't a team to be taken lightly.

"It's just about being mentally tough, and you have to do the little things. Everything counts when you play a team for the third time," senior point guard Rickey Claitt said. "Now they know what we do, how we do it and what we go to when we need a score."

Stanford should know all about Oregon State's scoring ability as the Beavers were able to jump out to big leads early in both matchups between the teams this year and never look back.

Since then, however, things have taken a slight turn for the worse for the Beavers. At one point it seemed apparent the team would eclipse the .500 mark in the Pac-10 and not have a game until Thursday, but in light of the recent three-game skid, the Beavers find themselves back in the play-in round in which one loss could mean the end of the season.

"Really, you do have to play every game like it's your last because it could be," junior Seth Tarver said. "So you just have to give everything you have each and every game and just take it one game at a time because if you don't win today, you won't play tomorrow. It's a fear factor but it's also exciting."

Continued...

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