Oregon State women lost most of its team and conference after last year’s Elite 8, now back in NCAA

By Canadian Press on March 17, 2025.

Oregon State was coming off a 27-win season that ended in the Elite Eight of the women’s NCAA Tournament last March when the Beavers lost most of their team and most of their conference.

Eight players from last year’s roster who had eligibility remaining, including the top six scorers, left Oregon State after that deep postseason run. And the Pac-12, their conference home for 38 seasons, was down to them and Washington State because of realignment.

But the Beavers (19-15) got back into the NCAA field again this year, with an automatic berth as West Coast Conference tournament champions. They are a No. 14 seed that has to go to the other side of the country to play at North Carolina (27-7) on Saturday.

“I’m ecstatic,” said 15th-season coach Scott Rueck, who took Oregon State to the Final Four in 2016. “So happy for the team. … Believed and stayed positive when things didn’t look quite right, and then things started to look better, and all of a sudden we’ve got a team worth of being in the Big Dance.”

While the Pac-12 is being rebuilt, Oregon State and Washington State are playing in the WCC as affiliate members.

The Beavers finished fourth in the regular-season standings, then won three games in as many days at the conference tournament. Kelsey Rees hit a game-winning shot to beat San Francisco in the opener before they beat top seed Gonzaga in the semifinals, and overcame Portland in the championship game.

“We might have had a little chip on his shoulder, but we just stayed so tight, and so together. And that’s what got us so far,” said sophomore guard Kennedie Shuler, one of the five returning players.

Oregon native Tiara Bolden, a senior guard averaging 8.2 points a game, joined the Beavers this season from La Salle, where she played only one season after junior college.

“My mind is literally blown away,” Bolden said after the Beavers watched the Selection Show together Sunday night. “I’m still like jittery, still shaking just for us. Like seeing us on the screen, it was definitely incredible.”

The Beavers lost five of their first six games to start the season, and after a four-game conference losing streak in January were 9-13 overall. Rueck is sure that there were times when his players doubted what they could do, and probable even wondered if it was worth it.

Since that January skid, Oregon State has won 10 of its last 12 games. The losses were in overtime against Gonzaga and a 69-66 setback at Saint Mary’s.

“We’re built like a traditional team … you start the year as an inexperienced power (conference) team, that’s ultimately what we are,” Rueck said. “We didn’t have the experience and we didn’t know who we were yet, and roles had to be defined and people had to step up, and over the course of the year that’s happened.”

This is the ninth appearance over the last 11 NCAA Tournaments for the Beavers, who before now hadn’t been a double-digit seed under Rueck. The Beavers were a No. 3 seed hosting a No. 14 seed last year — that has been reversed this season — and were No. 2 seeds in both 2016 and 2017.

“I remember first-round games that we had to escape,” Rueck said. “Everybody’s good this time of year.”

Including these Beavers.

“Here we are, with an opportunity to prove it again, against a really good team on their home floor. And so we’re excited about that,” he said. “But I think the makeup of this group, certainly the experience we have as coaches, the character of this team and the journey that they’ve been on, the way we’ve been playing lately, gives us all some hope.”

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Stephen Hawkins, The Associated Press