The Oregon State University men’s basketball team earned a 10-point win over the University of San Diego Feb. 25. It marked the team’s sixth win in its last eight games.
The next day, outgoing OSU Athletic Director Scott Barnes called Head Coach Wayne Tinkle into his office and told him that he was going to be fired.
Barnes gave the Beavers coach the choice to leave right away or stick with his team through the end of the season. Tinkle chose the latter.
“I had a little fun with it, to be honest,” Tinkle said of his announcement to the team while speaking to John Canzano on March 2.
“I started out very somber and said, ‘Guys, I didn’t want to deliver this news to you via text; I wanted to do this face-to-face. I’ve always said that I’m gonna coach until they tell me to stop. Well, they gave me the option to go until the season ended, and that’s what I’m gonna frickin’ do.’ And then 15 guys bum- rushed me and almost tackled me through the wall. … It was a pretty good high for all of us.”
What followed was a 93-72 loss at the hands of the University of Santa Clara in OSU’s regular-season finale. But in the postseason, the Beavers managed to win their first West Coast Conference Tournament matchup before falling to the eventual champion Gonzaga Bulldogs in the semifinals.
“You know, it could have been easy for us to throw in the towel and focus on the next year or whatever,” guard Josiah Lake said after the game. “But I think we all kind of came together and realized we don’t know how many more games we have left, so let’s try to make the most of it. Win every game we can. … (we) just wanted to get one more day together, one more day.”
The nine-point loss was the last game Tinkle would coach for OSU.
“Couldn’t have asked for a better guy to take me under his wing and just trust me throughout this whole process,” Lake said. Two days later, the Beavers would hire Michigan assistant coach Justin Joyner to be the next leader of the OSU basketball program.
Oregon State hired Tinkle in May of 2014. Before coming to OSU, he was the head coach of his alma mater, Montana University, where he led his team to the NCAA Tournament three times in eight seasons.
In Corvallis, Tinkle earned consecutive winning seasons and one tournament appearance in his first two years, but in the 2016-17 season, his team finished 5-27 – the second-worst winning percentage in program history at the time.
But in 2021, the Beavers made it to the Elite Eight for the first time since 1982, winning the Pac-12 Tournament and winning four straight NCAA Tournament games as a No. 12 seed.
But Tinkle never made the NCAA Tournament again and went 177-206 overall as the Beavers head coach.
As Oregon State moves on from Wayne Tinkle, it will also be moving on from the WCC. Starting next season, Joyner’s Beavers will be playing basketball in the new-look Pac-12.
OSU finished fourth in the WCC in its final season in the conference.
In his final press conference as the Beavers head coach, Tinkle praised his team for rallying around each other and himself: “The response: ‘Coach, lead us till the end,’ is going to be something that’s really near and dear to my heart.”
