Area women’s basketball: No. 9 OSU rallies to beat Cougars

Sydney Wiese scored 11 of her 16 points in the fourth quarter when No. 9 Oregon State rallied for a 54-45 victory Sunday over Washington State in Pullman

The Cougars have lost six straight games, but they held small leads after the second and third quarters before Oregon State outscored WSU 26-11 in the final quarter.

“It was a tough one,” Wiese said. “This was our third game in six days. We’re on the road, not a lot of crowd. Give them credit; they played hard.”

The Beavers (20-3, 11-1 Pac-12) did not go ahead for good until Weise buried a 3-pointer with five minutes left. Weise sank three of her four 3-pointers in the final eight minutes.

The Cougars (12-11, 3-9), looking for more energy after a sluggish performance Friday against Oregon, inserted three new faces into the starting lineup. Freshman Borislava Hristova came off the bench for the first time and scored 22 points against one of the leading defensive teams in the country.

“I feel like we played 35 minutes of great basketball,” WSU senior forward Mariah Cook said after scoring five points in her first start of the year.

Oregon 73, (24) Washington 63: Maite Cazorla and Kat Cooper each scored 16 points and the Ducks (17-6, 6-6) used 35 fourth-quarter points to beat the Huskies (16-7, 5-5).

The Ducks took their first lead of the game at 52-51 after Lexi Bando’s free throw with 6:40 remaining. It came during Oregon’s 14-0 spurt for a 59-51 lead.

Kelsey Plum hit a 3-pointer with 43 seconds left to get Washington within 67-62 but Lexi Petersen answered with two free throws.