A fight to the finish, but Beavers too tough on The Bluff

Coach Scott Rueck checks the scoreboard and his Oregon State players celebrate after their 76-72 victory over University of Portland Monday night at Chiles Center, handing the Pilots their first setback of the season

Michael Meek had a pretty good idea that the unblemished record his Portland Pilots were carrying wasn’t going to last through an entire season. He was hoping, however, it could make it through at least one more game.

Oregon State had other ideas, however. The Beavers muscled up to the Pilots Monday night at Chiles Center, rallying late and then stealing away with a 76-72 overtime victory in West Coast Conference play.

From 14-0 to 14-1, just like that.

“They just buried us,” Meek said after the Beavers won the rebound battle 49-25 against the shorter Pilots.

Coach Michael Meek has turned Portland basketball into a force in the WCC in his six seasons on The Bluff (courtesy UP sports communications)

Senior posts Kelsey Rees and Sela Heide combined to make 12 of 16 shots and Oregon State outscored Portland 34-26 in the paint. The Beavers also held a big advantage at the free throw line, making 23 of 32 attempts to 11 of 15 for the Pilots.

“We played with the necessary toughness,” OSU coach Scott Rueck said. “Portland typically is the type of team that plays very physical. (The Pilots) are all over you for 40 minutes. That’s what we talked about before the game. Against this team, it’s a test of toughness. They will never go away. They will keep coming. Our (players) did a great job of understanding that and keeping composure and toughness, both physically and mentally, throughout the game.”

The 6-5 Rees, who had scored a career-high 21 points with nine rebounds in an overtime victory at Gonzaga on Saturday, did herself even better Monday, going for 25 points and 12 rebounds in her 38 minutes. Five of the rebounds were at the offensive end, and four were put-backs for scores.

“She is a force,” Rueck said. “She plays so hard. All year long, she has been all over the offensive boards. She is embracing being a back-to-the-basket player, which is not her comfort zone. Coming to Oregon State last year (from Utah), she would much rather face up, and even this year has been an acquired taste as the year has gone on.”

The 6-7 Heide was 2 for 2 from the field and had seven points and three rebounds in 14 minutes off the bench. Portland’s tallest starter, 6-2 Trista Hull, fouled out and played only 18 minutes.

“We need her on the court more than that,” Meek said. “It came down to, was our tenaciousness and speed going to be a bigger difference than their physicality? They were able to bury us inside. We tried to double-team and we created some panic, but some things just didn’t go our way tonight. They got such deep position on us. They did a good job of getting right under the rim and shooting 2-footers. That was the difference.”

It’s not often that a team commits 22 turnovers and gets outscored by 24 points from the 3-point line and still wins the game. Oregon State was only 3 for 13 from beyond the arc to Portland’s 11 for 34. The Pilots used full-court pressure the entire way. The Beavers actually handled the press well; most of their turnovers came in the halfcourt, several of them on in-bound plays.

Emme Shearer (courtesy UP sports communications)

“Their press is a beast,” Rueck said. “It’s not easy to play against. It’s unpredictable because they will run and jump at different times. Our scheme was sound against it. (The OSU players) maintained their spacing and they gave each other outlets, so when the trap came they always had somewhere to go with the ball.”

It was a seesaw battle, with 15 lead changes and 10 ties. The biggest advantage either team held was eight points, when Oregon State went ahead 74-66 in the extra session. Portland led 60-54 with five minutes left and 62-58 with 2 1/2 minutes to go, but OSU stayed after it and improved its record to 6-8 after a 1-5 start. The Beavers are 2-1 in WCC play; all three games have gone into overtime.

Oregon State has had its way with Portland through the years. The Beavers lead the series 22-4 and have won six in a row, the previous five by an average of 21 points.

This matchup, however, was different. Oregon State’s fortunes went south after its Elite Eight appearance of a year ago when seven top players hit the transfer portal with the dissolution of the Pac-12 as we have known it. Rueck’s 2024-25 rotation features returnees Rees, Heide and guards Kennedie Shuler and AJ Marotte along with transfers Tiara Bolden and Cat Ferreira and freshmen Ally Schimel and Cloe Vecina.

Meanwhile, Portland is off to an excellent start — albeit against soft competition — with a starting lineup that features five seniors. Three of them — Maisie Burnham, Emma Shearer and McKelle Meek — have been together since they were freshmen. Burnham and Shearer each scored 21 points against the Beavers Monday night.

Senior guard Maisie Burnham collected 21 points, six rebounds and six assists in a losing cause for the Pilots against Oregon State (courtesy UP sports communications)

“Those three played against us three years ago in the NIT,” Rueck said. “They have won a ton together. They operate so efficiently together. We are like trying to put this puzzle together on the fly.”

Monday’s battle matched the two most successful coaches of women’s basketball in the state’s history.

Rueck’s career record stands at 591-250 — 303-162 in 15 seasons at Oregon State, where he won three straight Pac-12 championships and made six Sweet Sixteens and a Final Four.

Michael Meek’s career mark is 546-151, including 112-58 in his six seasons on The Bluff. In 10 seasons at Beaverton’s Southridge High, his teams were 213-58 and won five state titles over a six-year span from 2004-10.

Rueck and Meek have a special connection. Rueck was 288-88 at George Fox from 1996-2010, winning an NCAA Division III championship in 2008-09, when he was the division’s National Coach of the Year. When he left for Oregon State, Meek succeeded him at George Fox, going 230-35 from 2010-19. During his time with the Bruins, they made eight NCAA Tournament appearances and won six Northwest Conference titles. Meek was named Division III Coach of the Year in 2011-12, when they were 32-0 going into the national championship game.

There is a mutual respect but no personal relationship between the two.

“I didn’t know Scott before I got to George Fox,” Meek told me before Monday’s game. “I was a high school coach. He was at the Division III level, which I didn’t know much about until I got into the box there. I respect what he has done as a coach and the success he has had, and we talk when we see each other on the road, but it’s not like we have known each other that well through the years.”

Meek wasted no time turning the Portland program into a winner. In his first season (2019-20), the Pilots were 21-11 and claimed their first West Coast Conference Tournament title since 1994. He has compiled 20-plus wins four times in his first five seasons on the Bluff, has won the WCC Tournament three times and reached the NCAA Tournament the past two years.

This might be Meek’s best team at UP. He lost no players off last year’s team to the transfer portal and returned 11 letter winners while adding transfers Hull (Boise State) and Alexis Mark (Loyola Marymount), both of whom have become starters.

“That speaks to our culture,” Meek said. “Our kids know they are improving and that we care about their experience. We have never lost a starter to the portal. I am not naive to the fact that it could happen at any time. In today’s landscape, it is going to get harder. But I am proud of the fact that kids want to stay here.”

One of those kids is McKelle Meek, the coach’s daughter and the Pilots’ 5-7 point guard. While not a scorer, she buried a 3-pointer to give UP a 65-63 lead with 43 seconds left in regulation.

“McKelle has worked hard to get to the point she is at,” her father said. “This has been her best start to a season. It has been fun for me to coach her. She has enjoyed her experience here.

“I tell all our players, if they don’t love what they are doing and appreciate this opportunity, something is wrong. We had two all-league players (Burnham and Shearer) come back who could have gone to other places. They were like, ‘We love it here. We have no reason to look somewhere else.’ I feel strongly that McKelle will look back at her experience and feel good about this choice and experience she has had here.”

Meek would love for his team to get to the NCAA Tournament again and win at least one game.

“That would be the goal,” the UP coach said. “We fully understand how tough it will be for us to get back. Every team’s goal is to make the (NCAA) Tournament first. Wherever we end up, we will do the best we can to try to make a run.

“This team is off to a good start, but we have prided ourselves on playing our best basketball in March. Our program has done a good job of having the end in mind. It’s not realistic to look at running through the league season unscathed, but we are looking to go 1-0 in every game we play. That in itself is realistic.”

Portland and Oregon State were ranked third and fourth, respectively, in the WCC preseason coaches’ poll. The Pilots are off to the start they wanted. The Beavers are coming around.

“I am proud of our development,” Rueck said. “I am having a lot of fun with (the OSU players). But it is a massive challenge for all of us.”

Lopsided losses to nationally ranked UConn and Illinois, along with Minnesota and Arizona State, became learning experiences.

“Our schedule has been hard, and it has been tough losing games, but we have challenged ourselves through it and have grown immensely,” Rueck said. “If this team had lesser character, they could lose confidence. You have to give the (players) a ton of credit for staying positive and enjoying the growing instead of getting discouraged. This is the result of it.”

The Pilots and Beavers will have a rematch Jan. 18 at Gill Coliseum.

“If it’s going to be this physical at their place,” Meek said, “we are going to have to figure something out.”

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