No postseason run this time for sputtering Oregon State
Cinderella didn’t just lose her shoe. She was beaten over the head with it.
Perhaps no team has gone from the kind of unexpected run through March as Oregon State made last season to the depths of despair the Beavers found themselves in a year later.
Their season came to a merciful end Wednesday with an 86-72 loss to fifth-seeded Oregon in the first round of the Pac-12 basketball tournament at T-Mobile Arena, the same event that springboarded them to an Elite Eight run a year ago.
“It’s funny how life goes,” coach Wayne Tinkle said after seeing his team lose its 18th straight game to finish a program-worst 3-28. “The feelings we had just over a year ago to now, and there’s some valuable lessons in there that we’ve got to continue to learn and grow from as a group and as individuals. We faced a lot of adversity, and it’s been rough.”
It wasn’t supposed to go this bad, this fast.
Sure, Oregon State lost go-to scorer Ethan Thompson and team leader Zach Reichle to graduation, and guard Gianni Hunt left the team early this season for personal reasons. The Beavers also dealt with injuries and COVID, like most teams.
But this was a team picked to finish tied with Arizona for fourth in the league. The Wildcats are expected to be a No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament. The Beavers are left wondering what happened.
While there are no easy answers, many of the problems can probably be traced to the defensive side of the court.
Tinkle’s teams are known for a grinding style that makes life difficult for opponents who are usually more talented on offense.
But this year’s squad finished 349th out of 358 teams nationally in defensive efficiency.
“What we talked about as a group is, obviously we lost a lot of games, been beat by some good teams, and I think there were times we weren’t quite as united as we needed to be to where we were battling ourselves a little bit,” Tinkle said.
“I talked to them about raising children, and they’re going to step in some puddles from time to time. You have to love them through it, you’ve got to discipline them, but you’re always going to love them and hope that they learn and grow. And so we challenged our guys with some of those things in our final words (to them today).”
Jarod Lucas, a junior who was a key part of the Pac-12 tournament title and Elite Eight run last season, had 22 points in Wednesday’s loss.
He said the season was more about more than basketball.
“You can take from this season a lot of life lessons,” he said. “You’ve got to be grateful. As you’re playing the game of basketball, there’s so many other things going on in the world, and we’re very fortunate to be playing this game we’re playing today. So just gotta be grateful and find the positives.”
One of those positives was that they remained mostly competitive.
Oregon State was within three of their arch-rivals with 10 minutes remaining on Wednesday before fading down the stretch. The Beavers lost by just four on the road to Washington State on the final weekend of the regular season and played USC to double-overtime near the end of the year.
“I want to compliment them,” Oregon coach Dana Altman said. “A lot of teams would give in to it, but they’re playing USC to a double overtime, playing Washington State to an overtime. Almost beating Washington State on the road. That’s really hard to do when things aren’t going your way.”
Now Tinkle, who signed a lucrative contract extension after last year’s run, is tasked with figuring it out again.
One of the building blocks is Glenn Taylor Jr., who spent his first three high school seasons at Cheyenne and made the Pac-12 all-freshman team. He had 16 points on Wednesday.
“We built this,” Tinkle said of his program. “It hurts right now, but I know we’ve got the people in place, and we’ll get back to our winning ways because that’s what we’ve been able to do.”
Contact Adam Hill at ahill@reviewjournal.com. Follow @AdamHillLVRJ on Twitter.
