Beavers open Pacific-10 season against battle-hardened and wounded Wildcats

Oregon State could only break even against one of the weakest nonconference schedules in major college men’s basketball.

And now, the hard part begins. Suffice it to say, the outlook for the remainder of the season isn’t as sunny as the skies that greeted the Beavers on Wednesday when they arrived in Tucson for the start of the Pacific-10 Conference season.

OSU (6-6) faces Arizona at 5:30 p.m. today at the McKale Center, where it has lost 24 consecutive games to the 21st-ranked Wildcats (9-3), whose nonconference schedule was the toughest in the country by RPI, according to the Pomeroy Rankings. The Beavers then head north to Tempe on Friday morning for a 1 p.m. Saturday game with improving Arizona State (10-2) at Wells Fargo Arena.

There will be no easy Pac-10 games this year for anyone, but especially for the victory-starved Beavers, who have not finished above .500 in conference play since tying Arizona for the Pac-10 championship in 1989-90, Jimmy Anderson’s first season as coach.

“We’re done with nonconference, we need to move forward, keep coaching these kids, get the best we can out of them and go from there,” coach Jay John said after OSU’s latest misadventure, a 60-59 loss to Montana State on Sunday.

“It’s very disappointing, but we can’t dwell on it,” senior forward Marcel Jones said. “We’re going to fight, we’re going down there to win two.”

The Beavers are actually catching the Wildcats at a good time, if that’s possible. They lost their leading scorer, freshman Jerryd Bayless, to a sprained knee recently and he’s out for the weekend, at least. Bayless is considered a first-round pick in the 2008 NBA draft by NBADraft.net.

Also, 6-7 senior forward Bret Brielmaier is not expected to play, and former Marquette, Northwestern and Tennessee coach Kevin O’Neill has taken over for longtime coach Lute Olson, who is sitting this season out for personal reasons.

“We all have our issues,” acknowledged John, a Tucson native and former Arizona assistant coach under Olson before coming to OSU for the 2002-03 season. “I want my team to keep getting better. We have some ability.

“There’s still some doubt about when to do this, when to do that. More confidence is going to come from playing and working. Arizona happens to be the guys on the schedule.”

Positives were hard to find after the Montana State loss but the 31 minutes played by 6-foot-11 junior center C.J. Giles gives the Beavers a glimmer of hope. He had 13 points on only eight shots, and added 10 rebounds and five blocked shots in his first extended action since becoming eligible; foul problems limited him to 49 minutes in his first four appearances.

““I thought C.J. did a good job,” said sophomore guard Josh Tarver, who started for the first time since Nov. 23, ending a seven-game exile on the bench at tipoff. “He stayed out of foul trouble. He did a pretty good job and is going to fit better in our offense as the season goes along.”

John said Giles is an unselfish player who might need to be more selfish and more assertive offensively.

“At times he’s passing the ball off when he needs to go make a move,” John said.

OSU’s RPI ranking is 297, by far the lowest in the loaded Pac-10. Every conference opponent except Washington (102) has a higher RPI than all of OSU’s nonleague opponents except Montana State (101).

“I’m not happy about what our record is; I’m not,” John said. “But I do know this: there are some things that are superior to what we’ve had in the past. We defend. It’s not the defense.

“I thought we had a pretty decent chance to be 8-4 and maybe had a chance to steal one and be 9-3. I didn’t think it would take C.J. as long to get into the swing of things.

“But at the same time I knew with the young guys we have there was definitely going to be some growing-up time.”