Beat Journal #2
Everyone thought that the Beavers were going to go to Northern California and get swept away, sending them further down the Pac-10 standings.
Then a funny thing happened.
The Beavers broke their brooms and swept the bay area schools right out of their gyms. Then on Monday night they hosted Cal-State Bakersfield in a game that was supposed to help them get some confidence back before hosting the Ducks. It was a trap game, and they survived. The coverage from the Bakersfield Californian was interesting.
The article about Monday’s game would make you believe the Beavers were a Top 25 team or headed to the NCAA tournament. Considering the Bakersfield team has never beaten a Division I school on the road, this was as close as they have ever come apparently, I guess their ‘upset’ talk was funny. The Beavers are 9-10! Funny how two wins can change the face of a program to small schools such as Bakersfield.
From the Palo Alto Daily News regarding Saturday’s game against Stanford: they didn’t necessarily blame the loss on an injury to their starting point guard, but they certainly made sure the injury was mentioned in the first few paragraphs of the story.
Lastly, ESPN.com’s Andy Katz picked the Beavers as his “National Team of the Week.” Interesting. I am sure that Craig Robinson’s whirlwind of a week had a little to do with it, but an interesting choice nonetheless. He mentioned that, with a win this coming weekend against the Ducks, the Beavers would be back to .500 at 10-10. True. But, he also says not to sleep on them as a tournament team. Whoa.
Let’s not get ahead of ourselves here. I believe that he wrote that just in case they do make a run at a tournament berth, so he can say “told ya.” I don’t think he actually believes that, not that I have ever met him or anything. It just sounds crazy to say a 9-10 team with no success in nearly 20 years is a tournament sleeper. I think he got caught up in the Robinson saga and the fact that the Beavs are being taken lightly.
They won’t get taken lightly anymore.
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Beat Journal #1
My beat is Oregon State athletics and more specifically, men’s basketball.
After yet another downtrodden weekend of hoops, the team lost their third and fourth games in a row to the two Washington schools. Some of the coverage from up north may surprise you.
In the Seattle Post-Intelligencer (which apparently is going out of business?), I found a blog from a guy who must have been writing there forever. His name is Dan Raley. Raley, it seems from his blogs, is on his way out at the PI and is making his “farewell tour” of Pac-10 arenas.
In his pre-game blog from Saturday evening, he writes that Gill Coliseum is as outdated as “that sports coat his wife made him throw out” and that the arena is as “rumpled as Ralph Miller.” Additionally, he basically made fun of the fact that the Beaver players were missing a lot of their warm-up shots.
It seems that this is what Beaver basketball has come to in places outside the Corvallis area. This team has become the butt of all jokes and it seems that writers may save their best “stuff” for when they come to Corvallis.
Of course, it doesn’t help that the Huskies went on to beat the Beavers by 26.
What may surprise you is what was written in the Daily Evergreen Online version, a newspaper from Pullman, WA – home of the Washington State Cougars.
The game summary from Friday is straight forward, with no implications of beating down on a bad team or anything.
The “lead-up” article to the game on Thursday was interesting in contrast to Seattle’s newspaper. Although it gave all relevant stats for the game, it went far in depth on the career of Coach Robinson and the strides he has already made here.
I like what the Evergreen did here. I believe the article is way more favorable to the Beavers because, if any one program can understand how bad a basketball team can be, it’s Washington State.
Washington- football aside – has always enjoyed mediocrity and has never fallen to the lows we saw last year. Therefore, their writers are more apt to make fun the Beaver program. In a way, I agree with both sides here. I feel that Raley’s blog fits more into the attitude in Seattle and I feel that the article in the Evergreen fits more into what people would like to read in Eastern Washington.
After yet another downtrodden weekend of hoops, the team lost their third and fourth games in a row to the two Washington schools. Some of the coverage from up north may surprise you.
In the Seattle Post-Intelligencer (which apparently is going out of business?), I found a blog from a guy who must have been writing there forever. His name is Dan Raley. Raley, it seems from his blogs, is on his way out at the PI and is making his “farewell tour” of Pac-10 arenas.
In his pre-game blog from Saturday evening, he writes that Gill Coliseum is as outdated as “that sports coat his wife made him throw out” and that the arena is as “rumpled as Ralph Miller.” Additionally, he basically made fun of the fact that the Beaver players were missing a lot of their warm-up shots.
It seems that this is what Beaver basketball has come to in places outside the Corvallis area. This team has become the butt of all jokes and it seems that writers may save their best “stuff” for when they come to Corvallis.
Of course, it doesn’t help that the Huskies went on to beat the Beavers by 26.
What may surprise you is what was written in the Daily Evergreen Online version, a newspaper from Pullman, WA – home of the Washington State Cougars.
The game summary from Friday is straight forward, with no implications of beating down on a bad team or anything.
The “lead-up” article to the game on Thursday was interesting in contrast to Seattle’s newspaper. Although it gave all relevant stats for the game, it went far in depth on the career of Coach Robinson and the strides he has already made here.
I like what the Evergreen did here. I believe the article is way more favorable to the Beavers because, if any one program can understand how bad a basketball team can be, it’s Washington State.
Washington- football aside – has always enjoyed mediocrity and has never fallen to the lows we saw last year. Therefore, their writers are more apt to make fun the Beaver program. In a way, I agree with both sides here. I feel that Raley’s blog fits more into the attitude in Seattle and I feel that the article in the Evergreen fits more into what people would like to read in Eastern Washington.
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