Six months after blowing up his men’s basketball roster, Oregon State’s coach Wayne Tinkle takes an important step Wednesday in the reconstruction project.
Practice for the 2022-23 season officially begins today. The team – and for that matter, the coaching staff – that joins Tinkle on the floor has few leftovers from last year’s 3-28 squad.
Four players and one assistant coach return from the 2021-22 team. Six scholarship freshmen, three transfers and two assistant coaches make their OSU practice debut Wednesday.
There’s not much guess work as to how it shakes out this season. It’s a massive rebuild, one where the Beavers lean on the growth of freshmen, a second-year guard in Glenn Taylor and two experienced post players in Rodrigue Andela and San Francisco transfer Dzmitry Ryuny. Odds are certain the Beavers will be picked to finish last in the Pac-12 preseason poll. Getting to double digit wins will be a challenge.
By March when Oregon State heads to Las Vegas for the conference tournament, Tinkle hopes to have a team that is ready for the long haul. An OSU squad that leads with defense, plays physical, turns a good defensive possession into effective transition offense and takes care of the basketball.
“If we can say that in Vegas, then we’ll be confident that we can beat anybody in that tournament,” Tinkle said.
The roster rebuild started last March, when players began announcing transfer decisions, or simply leaving college basketball altogether. Then came the recruiting pitches, to high school seniors and transfers. Heading into his ninth year as Oregon State’s coach, Tinkle wanted to restore order.
“Our number one focus was to get our culture back, on and off the court, in the classroom,” he said. “All that stuff that was important to us our first seven years. We felt the best way to get our consistency back was to start with a younger freshman class.”
The Beavers’ half-dozen freshmen are a mix of regional, national and international players. Of the three transfers, two are out for an extended period because of injuries in guards Christian Wright and Justin Rochelin. The four returnees include Taylor, Andela, post Chol Marial and guard Dexter Akanno.
Also new to the team are assistant coaches Eric Reveno and Tim Shelton. Reveno is formerly head coach at University of Portland.
Most of the roster has been together since the outset of the summer. During summer quarter, Tinkle says the team had a collective grade point average of about 3.50. Tinkle took advantage of an NCAA rule that allows an international trip every four years by taking the team to Italy, where they played three games in August.
“We’re going to be really young, but the experiences we had over the summer were incredible in building our chemistry and getting our culture back,” Tinkle said.
What pleases Tinkle about his 2022-23 team is that they like one another, they’re competitive and “they let us coach them. When you have that combination for an extended period of time, we have success.”
Tinkle promises there will be hiccups. Non-conference play, which includes three games in the PK Legacy in Portland, offers a wide variety of competition. Same goes for the Pac-12 season, where several top 25 teams await OSU in UCLA, Oregon, Arizona and USC.
“We’re going to take some on the chin, probably. But they’ve got keep it together, play hard and allow us to coach them,” Tinkle said.
The Beavers’ playing style for 2022-23 has changed a bit from the original plan because of injuries to Wright and Rochelin. Wright, a transfer from Georgia, is out indefinitely after sustaining a knee injury in Italy. Rochelin, from Arizona State, had bone spur surgery and is out for a couple months. Their losses cut into guard depth and Tinkle’s plan for more defensive pressure from the backcourt.
“We’re going to have to be smarter with that moving forward until we get healthy 100%,” he said.
Still, Tinkle believes Oregon State fans will notice the emphasis on defense. He likes the depth inside, with 7-2 Marial, a veteran in Ryuny and a trimmed-down Andela. Tinkle says defense should be a strength.
Taylor heads into the season in an entirely new role. A reserve as a freshman a year ago, the 6-5 Taylor should be among OSU’s top scorers. Tinkle said the challenge for Taylor is the increased focus from opponents on their scouting report.
“He’s capable. We wouldn’t throw him into the fire if he wasn’t. He works his tail off. He’s got a great attitude and he’s a tremendous teammate,” Tinkle said of Taylor.
Oregon State opens the season Nov. 7 against Tulsa at Gill Coliseum. The Beavers don’t leave the state of Oregon until playing at USC on Dec. 4. OSU’s non-conference schedule includes six games at Gill Coliseum.
Nick Daschel reported from Corvallis
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