OT - "Upstarts embarrass Beavers"

[Mark Padgett]

That was the story headline in the sports section of this morning's Oregonian newspaper to describe what happened to the Oregon State men's basketball team in their game against Seattle University last night. Seattle won the game 99-48. It was the worst home loss for the Beavers since they started playing basketball in the 1901-1902 season (as I remember it ) and equaled their worst defeat ever (another 99-48 loss - at Arizona in 1997).

They trailed by 54 points in the second half before losing by 51. Seattle came in at 6-9, which makes the defeat even worse, considering only a few days before, the Beavers almost beat 17th ranked Washington on the road.

Beavers coach Craig Robinson (President Obama's brother-in-law) said he would "love to just throw this one out". To show his team how disappointed he was, he called a 5 am practice for this morning. His plan is to "make practice so unbearable that they forget about it" - meaning the game, not the practice, I guess.

What made it even worse for Oregon State was that Seattle's star player, 6'10" Charles Garcia, did nothing for 35 minutes because of foul trouble but it didn't matter, since they had five players in double figures. Oh yeah - there were nine or ten NBA scouts there to see Garcia. I wonder if they asked for their ticket price back.

Man - this has to hurt.