CORVALLIS, Ore. -If the ASU men's basketball team could figure out how to put two halves together, there's no telling what could happen.
The Sun Devils might, at least, not be entrenched in last place in the Pac-10.
What started as a deplorable game turned into a somewhat dignified performance Thursday night, but ASU couldn't complete a frenzied, second-half comeback, and dropped a 68-61 decision to Oregon State at Gill Coliseum.
Trailing 51-34 with 8:04 remaining, the Sun Devils scored 16 unanswered points to come within shouting distance, until they again started playing like the team that wanted to hide its face in the first half.
ASU made only three field goals after freshman guard Kevin Kruger's three-pointer trimmed the deficit to 51-50 with 5:06 left. OSU, meanwhile, was nearly perfect down the stretch, going 13-for-14 from the free-throw line to put the game away.
"You can't dig yourself that kind of hole on the road and expect to win," said Sun Devils head coach Rob Evans, whose team fell two games out of eighth place, the cutoff point to qualify for the Pac-10 Tournament.
The game was lost not in the final five minutes, but rather in the first half, when ASU (9-14, 3-11 Pac-10) committed 12 turnovers and went 4-for-21 from the field. The Sun Devils missed 13 of their first 14 shots, and scored only three points, all on free throws, in the closing seven minutes of the first half.
"We had a lot of looks, but they just weren't falling," said Kruger, who scored a career-high 20 points to complement sophomore forward Ike Diogu's 18 points, all but two of which came in the second half. "We weren't really listening to what coaches were telling us, and we allowed them to speed us up."
To put ASU's early struggles in perspective, fans should look no further than the fact that Kruger nearly exceeded his team's first-half production (13 points) in the opening four minutes of the second half by making three shots and a pair of free throws.
The Sun Devils exchanged baskets with the Beavers (10-13, 4-9) after Kruger came alive, before Diogu sparked the 16-0 run with a controversial three-point play. Officials had to review replays at the scorer's table to determine whether the basket counted. It did, and ASU was off and running.
Diogu sandwiched a short jumper around free throws by senior swingman Jamal Hill and junior point guard Jason Braxton, before Kruger drained a pair of three-pointers to bring the Sun Devils within one point.
Oregon State never relinquished the lead, however, as freshman forward Kyle Jeffers made two free throws, before junior forward David Lucas knocked down a pair from the line. Sophomore guard Lamar Hurd's layup on an entry pass from Lucas stretched the lead to 57-52 with 2:58 left, and ASU was too far down to recover.
"It's a loss, and a loss is a loss, to me," Evans said.
Reach the reporter at brian.gomez@asu.edu.
