A former investment bank manager and the brother-in-law of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has become the head basketball coach of the Oregon State Beavers.
Wait … what?
Oregon State has a basketball team?
Jesting aside, OSU Athletic Director Bob De Carolis’ newest hire, ex-Brown head coach Craig Robinson, created a stir, the manner of which no one could accurately pinpoint. After spending $75,000 on a coaching search and running such names as Randy Bennett, Tony Bennett, Ron Hunter, Bill Grier and Larry Eustachy through the rumor mill, the Beavers hired a coach with no apparent local ties (excluding the May 20 primary) and no national profile. Robinson appears to have come out of nowhere to land the job.
If his basketball pedigree is indicative of his coaching in any way, Oregon State may have found a diamond in the rough. Robinson, a two-time Ivy League player of the year, played under legendary Princeton coach Pete Carril, the Ivy League’s winningest coach and the architect of the Princeton offense. He served as an assistant to another former Princeton coach, current Northwestern head coach Bill Carmody. Robinson played professional basketball in England and served as an assistant to the general manager with his English team. The breadth of his experience is impossible to ignore.
Since the announcement, Beavers fans have summoned the audacity to hope that Robinson can help them realize the dreams of their fathers and return Oregon State’s basketball program to national prominence. Robinson has, by all accounts, impressed at press conferences; he’s said all the right things at exactly the right time. But Gary Payton, Brent Barry and Mel Counts are not walking through the doors of Gill Coliseum anytime soon. Robinson essentially has to start from scratch.
Oregon State basketball came to define futility last season, going 6-24 overall and failing to win a Pacific-10 Conference game – the first team ever to accomplish that ignominious feat. The separation between the Beavers and the rest of the field was so great that California, the ninth-place team, had a six-win advantage in conference play. The leading scorer and rebounder from this past season, Marcel Jones, has used up his eligibility. And of the remaining players, no one averaged more than 10 points, five rebounds or three assists per game.
Most Pac-10 will teams reload as graduation and NBA aspirations take over, but the Beavers will be returning much of the same cast … and that’s precisely where Robinson can make his mark. Oregon State should improve next year as the distractions of forward C.J. Giles and a coaching change fade away. Robinson won’t escape the cellar for the first two years of his contract at the very least, but he’ll be settled in and able to begin the recruiting process.
Regional recruiting at Brown and Northwest simply isn’t going to happen, so the notion that Robinson can do for Oregon State what Tony Bennett did for Washington State – engage in national recruiting – is not too far-fetched. Both schools are in undesirable locations with lackluster facilities and at least a decade of relative futility. Kids from Oregon and Washington, however, may eschew Oregon State in favor of a Pac-10 team or even Portland State, who can point to its Big Sky Conference championship and NCAA Tournament appearance this year (the first in school history) and sell a program on the rise in a much better location than Corvallis.
That having been said, the biggest recruit that Robinson needs to seize is – Beaver Nation. Oregon State fans are flocking to the back-to-back national champion baseball team. Basketball season has become that period of a few months between football season and baseball season. In a state with a great appreciation for the sport of basketball, the Beavers are suffering from signs of neglect – and any patience Robinson asks for may not be well-received.
Oregon State’s basketball team has suffered for years from inept coaching, underwhelming recruiting and the failure of project players to grasp their potential. Those looking for a quick fix from a big-time coaching hire will be disappointed with Robinson. As will some of those who wait for a complete rebuilding effort. Robinson was given a six-year contract, and it is conceivable that he’ll need all six years merely to help correct the mistakes of the past.
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