A missing starting point guard when the ASU women’s basketball team squared off with Oregon State Thursday night could have meant disaster for a squad that has already been hampered by youth and inexperience in the backcourt all season long.

But behind a career night from senior guard Danielle Orsillo, a point-guard-by-committee approach and their second-best shooting performance of the season, the Sun Devils were able to notch a 62-49 victory over the Beavers at Gill Coliseum in Corvallis without starting point guard Tenaya Watson (junior) in the lineup because of a foot sprain.

Watson will also miss ASU’s game against Oregon on Saturday, as she did not make the trip with the team.

But Orsillo carried the offensive load on the perimeter, as she scored 18 of her career-best 26 points in the second half, including ASU’s final eight points to lock down the win.

“With them trying to get after us and pressure, we kind of cleared things out and gave Danielle the basketball,” ASU coach Charli Turner Thorne said during her postgame radio interview. “She can pretty much get to the rim, and they were late on their help-side [defense]. She did a fantastic job attacking them, and we just really tried to jam it down their throats.”

The Sun Devils shot 59.1 percent from the field and scored 40 of their 62 points in the paint. They also out-rebounded the Beavers 25-22.

“The posts had a goal to keep this team to five offensive rebounds,” Turner Thorne said. “They didn’t quite meet that goal [OSU had nine offensive boards], but I would say that their posts only had four, [and] that was huge. They’re not an easy team to outrebound.”

ASU trailed 34-30 early in the second half after OSU started the period on a 6-0 spurt, but then the Sun Devils ripped off a 14-1 run to grab a 44-35 lead at the 10:23 mark.

After a 3-pointer by sophomore guard Alex Earl gave the Sun Devils their first double-digit lead of the game at 51-41 with 6:45 to play, a layup by OSU freshman guard Haiden Palmer and four free throws by junior guard Talisa Rhea cut ASU’s advantage to four points.

But the Sun Devils slammed the door after that, as a 3-point play the old-fashioned way by sophomore guard Kimberly Brandon ignited an 11-2 run by ASU to end the game.

“I’m especially pleased that we got a little bit of a lead, and usually we squander it completely, and we held it,” Turner Thorne said. “I kept pleading [to the team], ‘Let’s grow. Let’s keep getting stops,’ and I thought they did a really good job of playing one possession at a time.”

ASU led by as many as seven points in a first half that featured nine lead changes and one tie and took a 30-28 advantage into the locker room.

Redshirt freshman forward Janae Fulcher scored eight points and grabbed four rebounds off the bench for ASU, while Brandon added seven points, four rebounds and three assists.

Freshman Sabrina McKinney started in place of Watson and did not score, but she recorded four assists in 26 minutes of action.

“She really created some easy offense and just played some tenacious defense,” Turner Thorne said. “The thing you really love about Sabrina is she’s just tough. I knew she was not going to be nervous [to start] and I knew she was not going to be overwhelmed.”

Palmer scored 12 of her 16 points in the first half, while Rhea had 12 points but made just three of her 12 field-goal attempts.