Is it too much to say this is turning into a miracle season for Oregon State basketball? A little overstated? Yeah, you’re probably right. But who saw this coming? The Beavers host Stanford Wednesday night in the semifinals of the College Basketball Invitational. I know, I know, the consolation of the consolation tournaments, someone said. At least the event has been around twice as long as the Collegeinsider.com tourney, two years to one.
You think it seems like every Division I team made a postseason tourney? Uh uh. There were 218 that didn’t. Of the 347 top-level teams, 129 made it past the regular season. A much greater percentage of football teams played bowl games.
The Beavers and Cardinal meet for the fourth time at 7 p.m. at Gill Coliseum. OSU won the two regular-season meetings before Stanford knocked the Beavers from the Pac-10 tourney. The game is on HDNet. I know little about that, except Mark Cuban owns it and it’s Channel 79 if you have Direct TV.
The winner advances to face either Richmond or Texas-El Paso in the best-of-three finals. That’s right, potentially three games to decide a champ, with the first game at the site of the lowest seed, then the next two, if necessary, at the site of the higher seed. At this rate, the 15-17 Beavers could have a winning record. It all seems so improbable. They were horrible last year, becoming the first team to go winless through the Pac-10. They got rid of coach Jay John before January had expired and turned the reins over to assistant Kevin Mouton on an interim basis.
When the time came to hire a permanent coach, OSU was turned down by a couple hot mid-major prospects. Finally, athletic director Bob DeCarolis was determined to have a coach in the fold before he left last year’s Final Four. He got Craig Robinson. That doesn’t exactly inspire confidence. The new coach is the one who took the job because no one else wanted it. Now this most unlikely of campaigns.
There is reason for optimism in Corvallis again. Regardless of what happens against Stanford, the future seems so bright. If Robinson can do this with what was left over from that team last season, what can he do when he starts going into homes representing OSU, his confident bearing winning over parents and their child stars. Oh, and it won’t hurt that he’s the president’s brother-in-law.
A miracle? Naw, just a resurrection.
