She Who Remains: How Oregon State's stars turned away from the portal to build a contender

In an era of player mobility and empowerment, the Beaver's star players stuck together through two tough seasons and are now reaping the rewards of a possible championship year.

Courtesy: Oregon State Athletics

‘We are Family’ has long been the motto of the Oregon State women’s basketball program. It’s a phrase head coach Scott Rueck lives by. It guides the Beavers recruiting and permeates through every corner of their facilities. But during the Coronavirus pandemic, the family had fractured. The identity was lost and Rueck himself was left mourning a vision of what he hoped to build.

“This school and the city of Corvallis has such a community feel to it that when you step foot in our city and on our campus you feel it,” he says. “You feel a community and its a relationship based community. There wasn’t a restaurant open. There were no students on campus. It was cold.”

No plate lunches at Local Boyz. No parties at the Peacock. No raucous crowd in Gil Coliseum. Everything that made Rueck’s program what it was changed for a period of time.

“It was kind of a ghost town and it was my first time being away from my family,” junior guard Talia Von Oelhoffen remembers. “I was thrown into a dorm by myself and I wouldn’t interact with a human. I would go to practice and then I would just go back to my room. That’s just hard mentally and I think we’re social creatures. We need that interaction.”

The Beavers were 23-9 and ranked 14th in the AP poll when the pandemic hit. In the following two years, a program that averaged 27 wins a season over a seven year span was struggling to make it into the NCAA Tournament. Campaigns of 12-8 and 17-14 led to some questions about whether or not the program was headed in the right direction. Then came the transfers.

“We had not had many up until then,” Rueck says. “You could count them on one hand over ten years. So it was ‘look in the mirror, what’s wrong? what’s different?’ And man, when you do that it can be sobering but at the same time you do reflect.”

As the pandemic became endemic and life returned to normal in the Pacific Northwest, the Beavers hadn’t yet stabilized. Five star guard Sasha Goforth had transferred back home to Arkansas following the 2020 season. Another guard, Savannah Samuel, headed to West Virginia.

Then in 2021, the floodgates opened.

The Beavers two five-star forwards, sophomores Taylor Jones and Kennedy Brown, transferred to Texas and Duke respectively. Taya Corosdale went with Brown to Durham. Five-star guard Greta Kampschroeder left for Michigan. Many that covered the program wondered if Von Oelhoffen would deal a fatal blow by leaving. Instead the guard put out a statement on Twitter affirming her commitment to the Oregon State.

“For me, it’s just like ‘then it’s my job to rebuild it’,” Von Oelhoffen explains. “I think [the announcement] got a little twisted as disrespect to the people that transferred. I’m all for people doing what’s best for them.”

Even with the exodus, the program still recruited well. The Beavers brought in Timea Gardiner and Raegan Beers, ranked No. 6 and No. 10 respectively in the ESPN Hoopgurlz class of 2022. On paper, it felt like the program stabilized.

The Beavers finished 13-18 the following year, their worst finish under Rueck since 2012.

In an era of player mobility and empowerment, conventional wisdom would assume that one, or even a few, of OSU’s star players might explore their options in the transfer portal. Programs could come calling with their wallets ready, coaches could promise expanded roles or better opportunities. No one would’ve blamed Von Oelhoffen, Beers, Gardiner or sharpshooting guard AJ Marotte if they left. So did it ever cross their mind?

“No, not at all,” Gardiner says. “I don’t think any of us thought about it. We all realized how good we can be. So it was just like ‘okay, let’s get to work for next year.’”

That work started in, of all places, the Oregon State rec center. At first, the throngs of college aged men didn’t know what hit them. A group of young women took the floor during daily runs and started regularly running everyone off the court. One might think that a group of women, all over 6 feet, running sets and dominating everyone in their path would be easily recognizable as the Beaver women’s basketball team. But Beers said it took awhile for people to catch on.

“We walked in and half of them kind of knew and the other half were like ‘who are these girls?” Beers jokes. “That was the most important thing that happened that offseason because sometimes after you lose that many times it’s kind of hard to love basketball. And so that was the healthiest thing I think we did. We were having fun. We were reminding ourselves what it was like to have fun and reminding ourselves of what we can do.”

In short order, the joy returned to the team. A preseason trip to Italy bonded the group further and now the Beavers are enjoying their best run since before the pandemic started. Rueck’s appreciation for his players willingness to stay the course is only surpassed by his own gratitude in reflecting on what went wrong during Covid and the years after.

“Part of my history as a coach is you want to hold on tight to everything that you’ve done and that’s a fear based mindset that I think everyone battles,” he says. “I certainly have and do. But life has taught me that I’m not in control of those things. That limits my creativity and my interactions.”

As life has returned to Corvallis in the years since a near apocalyptic 2020 in the Willamette Valley — one that brought shut downs, protests and wildfires — so too has the life around Oregon State’s program. They’ve added more talent in local products Kennedie Schuler and Donovyn Hunter. And for a team that was picked to finish 10th in the Pac-12 preseason poll, the Beavers have four AP Top 25 wins and are in line to potentially be a host in the first two rounds in the NCAA Tournament.

“This year I think we have a different expectation of how to close out those close games and that belief in each other,” says Gardiner. “We all have different personalities but we all mesh so well together. It truly makes it so worth it.”

And those that remained are together. Instilled with a unique belief fueled by three words. A program motto that has made it through a pandemic, a portal and the fall of the Pac-12. ‘We are family’. Full stop.