CORVALLIS — So much for the preliminaries: Bring on the main event.

The final Pac-12 Conference women’s basketball regular season as we know it begins Sunday for Oregon State in a New Year’s Eve showdown with Oregon at 2 p.m. at Gill Coliseum.

Oregon State concluded the non-conference portion of the campaign with an 80-51 thumping of Morgan State Thursday at Gill. The Beavers enter the Civil War matchup with their interstate rivals with an 11-0 record this season, their best start since the 2019-20 team began 15-0.

“We’re all super-excited,” said Raegan Beers, the 6-4 sophomore who stirs the drink for the Beavers. “It’s such a fun game each year. We’re ready to get to work the next few days, fix what we need to fix and get after (the Ducks) on Sunday.”

Oregon is 9-4, with losses to Utah Tech 92-86, Baylor 71-51, Portland 91-60 and Santa Clara 89-50. Oregon State beat Santa Clara 80-52. Both OSU and UO played the Broncos at home.

That doesn’t mean the Beavers are 67 points better than the Ducks, of course. In the other comparative score this season, Oregon beat Arkansas-Pine Bluff 86-60; Oregon State knocked off the Golden Lions 85-74.

Rueck is in his 14th season as Oregon State’s head coach. He is 19-8 in his rivalry with Oregon. Rueck lost his first matchup with the Ducks, then won 14 straight meetings — the first coming back from a 20-point halftime deficit for a stirring 61-59 win at Gill in 2011. Since then, Kelly Graves — now in his 10th season as Oregon’s coach — owns a 7-5 advantage in the series. The teams have split games in each of the past two seasons.

This appears to be Rueck’s best team since the 2019-20 contingent that went 23-9 overall and 10-8 for fifth place in the Pac-12. That team featured Destiny Slocum, Mikayla Pivec, Taylor Jones, Kat Tudor, Kennedy Brown and Aleah Goodman, the latter now a first-year assistant on Rueck’s coaching staff. Jones is now leading scorer (16.2) and rebounder (7.4) on a Texas team that is 13-0 and ranked fifth in the country.

The 2019-20 Beavers, ranked as high as third during the season and 14th in the final AP poll, shot .515 from the field and .369 from 3-point range and averaged 71.7 points. Opponents shot .379 from the field and .294 from 3-point range and averaged 58.4 points.

The current Beavers are shooting .502 from the field and .382 from 3-point range while averaging 80.4 points. Opponents are shooting .332 and .252 and averaging 57.3 points. Those numbers will surely change through the Pac-12 season, with five conference schools currently ranked among the top 12 in the nation (UCLA No. 2, Southern Cal No. 6, Colorado No. 8, Stanford No. 9 and Utah No. 12).

From one to six, the 2019-20 Oregon State team was no doubt superior to that of this year’s club. Beyond that, though, this year’s contingent has more depth.

“Everybody on this team can play — one through 12,” Rueck says. “We’re probably similar to our (2016) Final four team in that regard.”

Nine players have appeared in every game. Kelsey Rees, a 6-7 junior, averages a team-high 27 minutes per game, but 10 players average double-figure minutes. Rueck often uses a 10-player rotation.

“Finding minutes for everyone,” he conceded, “is a challenge.” It’s a good problem for a coach to have.

Through the years, Rueck’s teams have shot for a high percentage, especially from 3-point range. Not so the past two seasons. In 2021-22, when the Beavers finished 17-14 overall and 6-9 for eighth place in Pac-12, they shot .419 from the field and .329 from 3 and averaged only 64.5 points. Last season, when they dipped to 13-18 overall and 4-14 for 10th in the Pac-12, they shot .420 and .311, respectively, and averaged 67 points.

Three freshman guards — Donovyn Hunter, Kennedy Shuler and Dominika Paurova — have helped change that this season. Against Morgan State, they combined for 14 assists.

“They are dynamic players,” Rueck said. “They are playmakers. They understand our system so well. It’s remarkable the poise they play with for being that young. It is a testament to the leadership on this team helping them along, answering their questions. But they are competitors. I’ve never minded a first-year player being out there in big moments. They are rising to the occasion.”

Against the Bears, the Beavers had 23 assists on 31 baskets. Many of them were feeds inside to Beers, who was 9 for 12 from the field and totaled 24 points and eight rebounds in 22 minutes against a Morgan State team without a player taller than 6-2.

“I had 24 points, but all of those came from a guard giving me the ball,” Beers said. “I could not do it without the guards working their butts off to give me great high-low passes. The window is small most of the time, but they’re finding those windows and delivering the ball on time. It’s awesome to see how much we’ve improved on that.”

The Beavers are averaging 21.1 assists per contest.

“What has made a big difference for us this season is our ability to move the ball on the pass,” Rueck said. “The ball is moving so quickly, it is moving faster than the defense can move. With a group of post players who pass the way they do, plus these young point guards with their vision and the way the ball comes out of their hands, our passing ability leads to a high shot percentage. That has been an area that has been a weakness for us the last couple of years. This year, it has been one of our strengths.”

Probably the best thing to come out of Thursday’s victory was the re-emergence of Adlee Blacklock, the 6-foot sophomore who led the Pac-12 in 3-point percentage at .465 as a freshman. Blacklock came into the game having made just 4 of 20 attempts from beyond the arc this season. She missed her first attempt off the bench, then drained three 3’s in a row. Blacklock finished 4 for 7 from distance and tallied a season-high 15 points in 16 minutes.

The difference? “Positive thoughts,” she said. “Just knowing I deserve to be here and I can shoot the ball. I was happy to see it.”

“I’ve been basing a lot of (playing time) decisions on defense this season,” Rueck said. “That’s an area in which Adlee is still growing. Her ability to shoot the ball is without question. That’s just who she is. She started for us (five games) late last season for a reason. Other people have outplayed her at times, yet she will get her opportunity. We need her to perform for us, and we need what she brings.”

The 6-foot Paurova was a great find for the OSU coaching staff. She handles the ball smoothly, can go coast to coast and is aggressive without being reckless taking the ball to the basket. She dished out seven assists in 18 minutes off the bench against Morgan State.

“Dom can play,” Rueck said. “As an 18-year-old, she was on the Czech Republic’s senior national team this past summer in the European Championships. She has a huge upside.”

When I asked if Rueck had gotten what he had hoped for out of the preseason, he nodded.

“It’s great to be 11-0,” he said. “Can’t do better than that. Even more important, we have seen a lot of different styles (from opponents). We have been pressured and defended in different ways. It has allowed us to teach and get reps against things we are going to see over the next couple of months. I am pleased with the progress of this team, with the momentum we have created.”

With five ranked teams, Washington receiving the most votes outside the top 25 and Oregon State the fifth-most in the AP poll, might this be the strongest Pac-12 women’s basketball conference ever?

“My answer to that is probably the same as it’s been the last couple of years,” he said. “It’s as well-coached a conference as it has ever been. There is longevity (in coaches) throughout the conference. Everybody knows their culture and their system. Everybody has recruited to who they are. There has been so little turnover for so long. We have been able to draw talent from all over the world to the West Coast.”

Rueck paused, thought for a moment and added, “If it’s not (the best ever), it’s up there. It will be fun. It will be a war again.”

I’m not sure how good Oregon State will be. There are no easy marks in the Pac-12 anymore. Seven teams had two or fewer losses in non-conference play. The worst overall records were Arizona and Arizona State at 8-4. Even if the Beavers go only 9-9 in conference — a distinct possibility — they will still have 20 victories going into the Pac-12 Tournament March 6-10 in Las Vegas. They certainly can make it to the NCAA Tournament if they play to their capabilities.

Rueck has no seniors, a first for him in his 28-year career as a head coach. The Beavers are going to need production from guard Talia von Oelhoffen, a fourth-year junior who is the No. 2 scorer (10.2) and assists leader (5.3), their best playmaker and leader and MVP of the recent Maui Classic. For whatever reason, Rueck removed von Oelhoffen three minutes into the Morgan State game and she sat for the rest of the quarter. Von Oelhoffen finished with no points in 16 minutes, perhaps the first scoreless game of her career. Talia needs to be a force at the offensive end — scoring, shooting, passing, creating — for Oregon State to be at its best.

I asked Beers if she thinks the Beavers are ready for conference play.

“I do,” she said emphatically. “This team has grown a lot. We have a lot of guys who have improved. We have seen everybody improve, including our freshmen. It’s been exciting to see that.”

► ◄

Readers: what are your thoughts? I would love to hear them in the comments below. On the comments entry screen, only your name is required, your email address and website are optional, and may be left blank.

Follow me on X (formerly Twitter).

Like me on Facebook.

Find me on Instagram.

Be sure to sign up for my emails.