Arizona forward Azuolas Tubelis scoops his way to a bucket against Oregon State during the second half of Thursday's game in McKale Center. Tubelis led the way with 22 points, seven rebounds and three assists.

 Kelly Presnell, Arizona Daily Star

If there was any point on the Pac-12 schedule when the third-ranked Arizona Wildcats were supposed to get little bit sleepy, it was Thursday night.

Last-place Oregon State was coming to McKale Center with only seven healthy scholarship players. And next up on Saturday was Oregon, which has beaten Arizona seven straight times, in a game that is drawing ESPN and its "College GameDay" crew to town.

Not surprisingly, then, en route to their 83-69 win over OSU on Thursday, the Wildcats trailed or were tied for much of the first 15 minutes. They led by just two, 44-42, at halftime, then used two relatively modest runs in the second half to take control of things.

They wound up with the usual big performances from forward Azuolas Tubelis (22 points), wing Bennedict Mathurin (20) and Christian Koloko (16 points and nine rebounds).

But it all may not have measured up to the high standards the Wildcats have created for themselves en route to their 23-2 start.

Arizona center Oumar Ballo swats the ball out of the reach of Oregon State center Roman Silva during Thursday's first half.

“I think you chalk it up to Oregon State, you give them a little bit of credit," Arizona coach Tommy Lloyd said. "Maybe human nature got us a little bit, but at the end of the day, if we're hemming and hawing over a 14-point conference win, we’re probably nit-picking a little bit.”

Mostly, Lloyd blamed himself for using the Beavers to test out some new defensive and offensive wrinkles that fizzled, even while his Wildcats moved to 23-2 overall and 13-1 in the Pac-12 while OSU dropped to 3-21 and 1-13.

“I’m gonna wear that one,” he said. “We got maybe too tricky with our game planning and to be a good team, you can't trick the game. And that's on me. We were trying some things defensively that we obviously weren't doing a very good job of doing. I thought it took some of our aggression away and I just thought we were playing pretty lazy overall. Probably a lot of that was the scheme.”

Whatever it was, the Beavers took advantage by shooting 45.7% overall and hitting 6 of 13 3-pointers in the first half. OSU actually took five different leads before halftime, leading by four points early and 30-27 with 6:35 left in the half when center Roman Silva made a rebound basket.

One of the few early signs of life for Arizona, meanwhile, were two drives to the basket from guard Dalen Terry that erased two of OSU's first-half leads.

“I just read the game,” Terry said. “If they’re not gonna guard me, I’m gonna go score the ball. And if they guard me, I’m gonna find my teammates. Luckily, that happened and it got us going.”

The No. 3-ranked Arizona Wildcats overcame another sloppy start to cruise past the Oregon State Beavers 83-69 Thursday night at McKale Center.

The Wildcats did lose some momentum late in the first half, while also receiving a scare when Oumar Ballo went down with 3:50 to go in the first half. Ballo was helped into the locker room after appearing to suffer a left ankle injury.

While Ballo went back into the game with 1:06 left in the half, at that point the Beavers were cutting what was a 43-34 UA lead with 2:21 left all the way down to just two points when Warith Alatishe hit a 3-pointer with two seconds left.

UA led 44-42 at halftime and Lloyd wasn’t the only one kicking himself. 

“That's on the players,” Terry said of UA's slow start. “Obviously we’ve got to pick it up but we did a good job of picking it up in the middle of the first half and keep it going through second half to win the game.”

As it turned out, Lloyd did actually put some of it on his guys, though he quickly added that “us coaches aren’t perfect either.”

Lloyd said the Wildcats have been adding some of the defensive wrinkles to their base defense all season but that the execution wasn’t there this time.

“If you’re not playing extremely hard before you get to those, it’s a problem,” Lloyd said. “I just felt like our ball pressure dropped off. I thought our bigs weren’t playing the way they were capable of and I really challenged them at halftime to pick it up.”

They did.

Leading OSU just 44-42 at halftime, Arizona went on a 13-3 run to start the second half. Tubelis (six points) and Mathurin (five) combined for 11 points through the first three minutes of the half to give UA a quick 55-42 lead that prompted OSU coach Wayne Tinkle to call timeout.

At that point, the Beavers had missed five of their six shots. Arizona then went on another 12-2 run to take a 75-53 lead midway through the second half, getting an emphatic dunk from Tubelis on the break and a 3-pointer by Mathurin.

By then, the Wildcats' effort was clearly there. UA went up by 21 with six minutes left when Lloyd began turning to his seldom-used reserves, finishing with 52.5% shooting from the field while holding the Beavers to just 39.1%.

“I have a little saying I always keep in my office,” Lloyd said. “It’s 'Effort … before execution.' I think sometimes as coaches, we get a little too cute. At the end of the day, nothing beats great effort.”

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Contact sports reporter Bruce Pascoe at 573-4146 or bpascoe@tucson.com. On Twitter @brucepascoe