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Game 2, CBI Championship Series: UTEP tops Oregon State to force decisive Game 3

Monday night in the Pacific Northwest, UTEP coach Tony Barbee received a technical foul for arguing with an officiating crew that awarded 17 more free throws to the homestanding Oregon State Beavers. Wednesday night in El Paso, the scales tipped in the other direction, and as a result, college basketball's only best-of-three postseason playoff will once again go the distance.
 
Playing in the comfortable confines of the Don Haskins Center, the Miners of Conference USA rebounded from a Game 1 loss to defeat Oregon State, 70-63, in Game 2 of the CBI Championship Series. The seven-point win enables UTEP to tie the series at one game apiece and host Friday's Game 3, a de facto title tilt for the CBI trophy.
 
In Corvallis, the Beavers received the benefits of home cooking, as OSU took 26 foul shots compared to just nine for UTEP. The disparity became a major source of postgame discussion, and Barbee himself vowed that the equation would be different when the series swung to the West Texas town sung about in long-ago ballads.

No, the referees didn't fall in love with a Mexican girl, as the old song about El Paso once said, but the men with the whistles did hand out 37 foul shots (27 of them before the endgame phase of this contest, in which OSU purposely fouled) to the Miners, compared to just 11 for coach Craig Robinson's Beavers. Yes, UTEP guards Stefon Jackson and Randy Culpepper were faster than OSU's defense for much of the second half, but it's still noteworthy that the free-throw equation shifted so markedly in a series where topic number one was the charity stripe. The nature of the first two games will make Game 3's officials--and their style of officiating--a fascinating source of speculation and intrigue.
 
Discussion of Friday's final battle can wait, though. UTEP was in danger of failing to extend this series midway through the second half, when the Miners trailed by a 44-40 count. It was only when their season was on the line that the home folks revved up their engines. 
 
The same uncertain UTEP team that tallied just 40 points in the game's first 29 minutes managed to ring up 30 points in the final 11 minutes of this collision, with Jackson and Culpepper leading the charge. After Barbee called a timeout to calm his team at 11:02 of the second half, Jackson and Culpepper ripped off UTEP's next 16 points to give the Miners a 56-53 advantage with 5:14 left. As tension escalated inside the arena, Jackson hit a pair of clutch jumpers to pad UTEP's small lead, and despite a bunch of missed free throws (of the 37 UTEP received, the Miners hit only 22), the home team had enough of a cushion to win without too much drama at the end.

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The math of this series is simple: Oregon State needs these games to be ugly and slow, so that the high-octane Miners get drawn into a grinding halfcourt affair. For three quarters of this contest, the Beavers had the tempo and style they wanted, but in the final 11 minutes of regulation, UTEP was able to amp up the pace and shake free from the grasp of Robinson's relentless roster, which can't be too discouraged about the way this game unfolded. Yes, UTEP won, but with OSU having a second chance to crack the code in El Paso, the Beavers know that they can stay with the Miners, even on a night when they shoot 26 fewer free throws.
 
Who has the edge in Friday's season-ending showdown? The most reasonable response is to say that this hard-fought series is an even match between two very competitive clubs.

By Matt Zemek
DFN Sports Staff Writer