The Fast Break: Breaking down the defensive mastery of the No. 9 Oregon State Beavers
Plus: The Oregon men come alive down on The Farm.
The praise has been profuse, the numbers “ridiculous,” the effect abundantly clear. Oregon State women’s basketball is winning and the Beavers are doing it with defense.
Again.
For the many parallels this season’s group has garnered to that momentous 2015-16 team — the depth of contributors at guard, the shooting on the wings, the rugged post play — it’s Oregon State’s team defense that has the Final Four being tossed around again in regards to the Beavers’ ceiling.
“What we do know about (Scott) Rueck is, If you don't play defense, you ain't playing,” Pac-12 Network Broadcaster Ann Schatz told The I-5 Corridor of the Oregon State head coach. “I've watched him sit superstars down the stretch of games if they’re a ‘defensive liability' … He's got kids who are so much of an extension of that belief… It’s just how they do this dance.”
There’s a sturdy statistical resumé to back that jig up this season.
Utah (No. 13 nationally at 81.3 points per game) stumbled to a season-low 44 in a Feb. 9 defeat to the Beavers. Colorado — fourth in a loaded Pac-12, scoring 77 per outing — was held to 62 and 59 points, both among the Buffs’ lowest marks of the season, and Oregon State held USC to a season-low 56 in Los Angeles, before 58 last Sunday in Corvallis.
The No. 9 Beavers (21-4, 10-4) are No. 5 nationally in field goal percentage defense (34.8). They lead the Pac-12 in the category, too, outshooting teams by an average of 12.3 percentage points, while holding conference foes to 60 points per game.
The 2015-16 team, for comparison?
Points allowed per game: 51.9 — tops in the conference and third nationally.
Average opponent shooting percentage: 32.5 — best in the conference.
Point differential: 14.9 — No. 9 in the country.
The numbers are similar. But has the recipe changed?
Charli Turner Thorne doesn’t think so. The longtime Arizona State head coach — No. 2 all-time in the Pac-10/Pac-12 in career wins — who now scouts for the WNBA’s Phoenix Mercury and does commentary for the Pac-12 Network, called Oregon State’s game at Utah earlier this season and saw everything she needed to see.
“They play you hard on the ball,” she said, “and they'll chase you in the gaps. And then (Rueck) always has a big rim protector. That's his thing… ‘We're gonna play you hard and you're not getting to our rim. If you don’t have a midrange game, forget it.”
During her time as the Sun Devils’ coach (1996-2022), Turner Thorne’s team were consistently amongst the top defensive programs in the Pac-12, and often the country. Constructing the high-pressure, trap-heavy schemes meant recruiting players who embraced her style.
Rueck’s continually done the same, poaching lengthy guards, multi-positional wings and, as Turner Thorne noted, game-changing posts to roam the paint. Then, he coaches positioning to maximize the exceptional length.
“Great defensive teams,” Turner Thorne said, “are just position, talk and awareness.”
Unlike those frenetic Sun Devils teams though, the Beavers under Rueck haven’t historically induced havoc by causing turnovers, said Mary Murphy, a basketball analyst who calls college and WNBA games for ESPN, BTN and the Pac-12 Network.
“That's not where they hang their hat,” Murphy said. “I think they hang their hat on having great matchups, getting a good game plan together and having the team execute it.”
She lauded the Beavers’ ability to pull off an elite-level team-wide connectedness, despite the numerous lineup combinations they roll out, and the depth of youth within the rotation.
Junior guard Talia von Oelhoffen, whom Rueck credited with this team’s defensive rise, has formed a formidable duo at the point of attack alongside freshman Donovyn Hunter. Meanwhile, the coach has worked to turn forward Timea Gardiner and center Raegan Beers from decent defenders, Murphy said, into good ones.
When Oregon State is set to face “something unique” in their Sunday game, the Beavers, said Rueck, will spend time preparing for it Tuesday and sometimes Wednesday. They’ll adjust the pie chart as needed, skewing towards the more challenging matchup of the weekend.
USC came to town last Sunday, bringing one of those unique matchups, freshman superstar Juju Watkins, along with it.
Watkins ranks first nationally in usage rate, according to Her Hoop Stats, and second in the country in scoring average per game at 27.5 points per game. The guard toppled No. 2 Stanford two weeks ago behind a 51-point explosion. She’d scored less than 20 points just twice on the season, and never fewer than 17.
In an eventual 58-50 win over a Beers-less Beavers team, Watkins notched 18, but hit just six of her 32 shot attempts as the Trojans shot a season-low 31 percent.
“That’s the stat sheet we like to see,” said Rueck.
— SH
Remember a week ago when Dana Altman said his Oregon men have come back from worse than this?
1. He’s right.
2. Even he probably figured this week down in the Bay Area would be a coin flip.