Crafting a winner: Time apart plays key role in keeping the No. 11 OSU women together

The No. 11 OSU women are closer than ever -- and part of that begins with an understanding of personal time.

CORVALLIS — The Oregon State women might be playing the best ball in the country.

The Beavers have won five consecutive games, now with four straight over top-25 teams thanks to another convincing win over No. 4 Colorado on Sunday in Boulder.

The Beavers dominate with stellar guard play. The Beavers are bruising in the paint. And the Beavers have thrived with cohesion — those around the team will tell you there’s something special about the chemistry. 

The funny thing is, a day after flying back from Denver following the program’s first top-five win on the road — ever — there’s a good chance the group spends little time seeing each other today. See, Monday is the day off for the Beavers. The gym is open and optional, but this is the day where players are allowed to play catch up, pursue other interests and attempt to live a little bit of a life outside of basketball. 

“We’re a super tight team — tighter than most teams,” sophomore center Raegan Beers said. “But no matter how close you are, we all need that time away. We have our time together and we have our time away, it’s so healthy.”

Beers told me this from the basement of Oregon State’s student experience center, a building in the heart of campus which opened in 2015 and houses OSU’s ceramics room. It was the day after Oregon State beat Oregon on the road in early February, a game that saw Beers score 16 points, haul in 14 rebounds and largely toss around her out-played opposition. Beers is proud of the physical style of basketball she plays — bruises and scratches paint her arms like medals from battle — and her strength definitely came in handy as she worked out a large hunk of clay on a spinning wheel.

Andrew Goodwin photo/OSU Athletics

She started ceramics with her grandma in eighth grade — an artistic reprieve for a girl from a family filled with athletes — and has been hooked ever since she nailed a vase around her sophomore year of high school. When she visited Corvallis in February of 2019, Beers made a point of checking out the ceramics center.

“It was closed,” she said. “My mom got this picture of me looking through the window with my eyes as wide as can be.

“People don’t know this, but for me, basketball and ceramics are kind of tied. I love this as much as I love basketball.”

It is quite the contrast. The day before, I saw a woman bounce off of Beers and into the stanchion of Matthew Knight Arena. I saw her block two shots, fall into a cheerleader while fighting for a ball, give post game interviews and bask in the ovation from the Oregon State fans who drove 40 miles south to watch her and her teammates play.

Then on Monday, Beers was just another one of about 20 people working on various projects in that OSU basement. Of course, there are differences. Beers’ 6-foot-4 frame towers over most of her peers in the room. She stores her unfinished projects on a shelf high from the reach of everyone else, and it’s impressive how long she’s able to comfortably sit on that two-foot stool. It was even more impressive how throughout a 30-minute interview Beers made eye contact while speaking and still shaped that clay into a large fruit bowl by the end of the process.

“That’s very much like basketball,” she said. “You never forget how to shoot. It just becomes muscle memory.”

There’s also a certain amount of ownership in ceramics that Beers said could make her a better player. She pointed to a game last season when the correlation actually crossed her mind mid-game.

“I had thrown something and it was beautiful and I was looking at it I had put a hole in it because my thumbs were too in it,” she said. “I thought it was ruined, but I went back to the wheel and I ended up saving it. It was like, ‘Hey, I saved it.’ So in that game, I wasn’t playing very well and, so in my mind, I was like, ‘Hey, you just screwed up and you can come back and fix this.’

“It’s weird because I actually haven’t thought about that since, but it’s definitely something that can come up. You thought it was over, you thought it was trash, and now it’s one of your best bowls.”

Other teammates have other things. Beers said she knows sophomore forward Timea Gardiner likes to read a lot on her Mondays, “That’s why she’s so stinking smart.” But for the most part, Beers said she comes down to the ceramics center, does her own thing and is recharged. It’s important, she said, especially as the other half of her life continues to accelerate.

The Beavers are up to No. 11 in the AP Top 25 rankings. They have No. 9 UCLA on Friday, No. 10 USC on Sunday and, if they keep this pace up, are playing each game with the potential of an NCAA No. 1-seed on the line. It can be all-consuming.

“The season is hard and it takes a toll on you,” Beers said. “But it really helps you point out and recognize what your priorities are. Is this a priority? Or is it just something you like to do? Because if you really want to do it, you’ll get in here and find the time to do it.”

— Tyson Alger, The I-5 Corridor