Tyler Honeycutt and Co. Beat Beavs

The Bruins were finally able to put away the Beavers late in the second half to win 65-56, in the Seniors' penultimate game at Pauley.

Well the first half was the Tyler Honeycutt show. Donnie Mac is right to call him the Toolbox, because the kid clearly has all the tools. Whether it was a thunderous putback dunk off of a missed three, a silky smooth three to spark the final run, a fistful of blocks (5), or a Kevin Love-esque outlet pass to end the first half, Honeycutt was everywhere and it showed on the stat sheet. That spark that he gave the team clearly carried over into the second half to give him a  new career high of 18 points and a double double with 10 rebounds.

While TH was fantastic, the only other player that had a good game would be Malcolm Lee, wide open three point airball notwithstanding, he was able to leak out multiple times and finish off of some nice TH passes on the break and did a pretty good job spearheading the top of the zone, which was where OSU shot themselves in the foot for much of the night.

The rest of the cast put together what we'll call an uneven performance. For each positive they brought to the game, you could also think of a negative just as quickly. Jerime Anderson had his usual flashes of great play between bouts of indecisive floundering. Mike Roll had some nice passes, but also some uncharacteristically bad ones and was cold from the field. Mustafa Abdul-Hamid brought some energy off the bench and had a nice drive to beat the shot clock for an And-1. I suppose the complaint about him is that he should have played more?

What was also supposed to be Bobo's coming out party was a bit underwhelming, as he didn't see as many meaningful minutes as many of us were anticipating. He did contribute a couple of blocks and made his presence known inside, but he did seem to get lost in the zone the longer the Beavers' offensive possession went on. He could also be said to be partly responsible for the rebounding deficit (37-23, 19 offensive given up) that really hurt the Bruins in this game and helped fuel OSU's runs in the second half.

For the rest of that responsibility, we look no further than N's favorite player: Nikola Ragovic. The frontline was already overwhelmed as it was coming into the game due to injury, and given that we were playing a zone, a rebounding deficit is to be expected, but it looks pretty bad when the other guy playing with you in the front court pulls down 10, and a shooting guard playing small forward doubles you up on the glass (Malcolm Lee with 4).

All in all, we can't be too upset about grabbing a win, especially this season, and especially with the battered state of the team right now, but I just hope TH the freshman gets some help from the seniors on Senior Day.