Head coach Wayne Tinkle and the squad of Oregon State University men’s basketball players are optimistic about the upcoming season. Despite losing former players to the transfer portal, the team wasted no time in fostering a new lineup.
The Beavers have very few players who stayed from the 2023-2024 season, with notables being Josiah Lake II, Thomas Ndong and Michael Rataj.
Tinkle was able to use new assistant coach Chris Haslam, who worked the international player route in his days at Montana State University and Utah State University, to his benefit.
The team rostered five players from international grounds, from four different countries last season. This year, the team has nine, coming from eight different countries, including Turkey, Iran, Denmark, Lithuania, France, England, Canada and Germany.
“Even at times this summer when they played open gym they organized Internationals against the Americans in a few of their pickup games, and the neat thing is there are a lot of different personalities but the chemistry is really good,” Tinkle said. “Now we have got to develop that when starting positions are handed out, playing time and shots are handed out, but they have been fun to be around.”
With the new faces, new leaders emerged.
Tinkle has been known to give nicknames to the more seasoned players, but a first-year player seems unprecedented.
“Demarco ‘Polo’ Minor, transfer point guard from Southern Illinois Edwardsville, all-league player there,” Tinkle said at West Coast Conference media day. “The kind of point guard we haven’t had in a little while as far as leadership, toughness, defensive-minded, but a playmaker on the offensive end as well.”
Polo, a nickname almost everyone calls him, arrived this summer from a Division I school in the Ohio Valley Conference. He averaged 15.5 points last season for the Cougars and shot just under 40% from the field.
“Mike (Michael) and Polo are probably the two main guys that have been steady leaders, really Polo since the day he showed up in the summer all the way until now, and now we need it to spread to some of the other guys too,” Tinkle said.
Tinkle also mentioned Michael Rataj, a junior from Germany. He has started games for the Beavers as a freshman and sophomore and looks to help get some of the new faces in town more acclimated to being a Beav.
“They should expect a great fanbase, a lot of fun in Gill Coliseum, I think they are going to enjoy the time, the atmosphere and just have a great time over there,” Rataj said.
Along with that, Rataj hopes to be a leader, being one of the most seasoned Beavers on the team.
“My teammates and coach gave me the role to step up and I hope I can show them what I am capable of and just step up in the right situations and make winning plays and win games,” Rataj said.
With the realignment that happened, this caused a shake with the 2023-2024 team. Rataj expressed his feelings towards Tinkle about the breakup.
“He was disappointed,” Tinkle said. “He realized that they got opportunities as freshmen and sophomores that they probably wouldn’t have gotten anywhere else across the country at this level, and so he felt a little bit disappointed that they didn’t see it through. But we challenged him to be that guy.
“We promised him we would bring in other really good guys, more talented, more mature, and that he could be the leader that carries the flag moving forward to help us get back to our winning ways.”
With a hefty group of players leaving, Dajohn Craig said it wasn’t all due to conference realignment.
“A lot of guys had different reasons, different opportunities they needed to meet, I respect what they did, but I don’t think anything as far as conference change or anything like that would have changed anything,” Craig said. “I think it was just based on their heart and where god wanted to take them.”