A year ago, Oregon State pitched itself as America’s team in March. An underdog story out of the Pacific Northwest that was unranked to start the season, the Beavers had nonetheless challenged for the Pac-12 title and very nearly reached the Final Four.
How could you not root for them?
Then, Oregon State lost to South Carolina in the Elite Eight, conference realignment left the Beavers without a real home in 2024-25, and the bottom fell out.
The top six players in minutes played transferred out, including All-American Raegan Beers and three other players (Timea Gardiner, Donovyn Hunter, and Talia von Oelhoffen) who would win conference championships in 2025. They lost five of their first six games of the regular season, the lone win coming against a Division II opponent. The roster was so depleted that a walk-on was getting rotation minutes.
But it’s once again March, and somehow, Oregon State is headed back to the NCAA Tournament. After a 59-46 win over Portland in the West Coast Conference championship, America’s team is getting one more chance to dance.
The Pilots tested the Beavers with their full-court pressure and zone defense, daring a team with a short rotation that shot below 30 percent from 3-point range in the regular season to beat them from distance. Sophomore Kennedie Shuler manuevered through the press on her own, and Oregon State found another way to beat the zone, with 6-foot-7 center Sela Heide commanding the offensive glass and finishing over the top.
Transfer Catarina Ferreira was tough inside off the bounce for the Beavers. Portland couldn’t contain her attacks to the basket, and she led Oregon State with 16 points and 12 rebounds. When the Pilots cut the lead to six in the fourth quarter, Ferreira stemmed the tide by scoring on a putback and then drawing a charge on the other end.
The Beavers’ defense was also excellent, limiting Portland to 21.7 percent shooting in their most comfortable win of the tournament.
How the Beavers got here
Oregon State needed some magic on more than one occasion to even reach the WCC final. In the quarterfinals, the Beavers built up a 17-point lead but gave it all away to San Francisco. Senior Kelsey Rees saved the day with a bouncing buzzer-beater to advance to the next round.
A similar script followed in the semifinal. Oregon State was up by 10 in the first half but trailed by six to No. 1 seed Gonzaga with 2:18 to play. Ferreira and Shuler powered the Beavers back, and Shuler got to the rack just before time expired for the team’s second consecutive win in the final seconds. It was Shuler’s third game-winner of the year and ended the Bulldogs’ streak of seven straight NCAA Tournament appearances.
There wasn’t a need for last-second heroics against Portland, as a 20-2 running spanning the first and second quarters gave Oregon State all the cushion it would need. Six different Beavers scored during that stretch, including five from former walk-on Ally Schimel, who learned that she had earned a scholarship at the team’s Christmas party.
Until this conference tournament, the Beavers weren’t showing many outwards signs of turning things around. Oregon State was 9-13 after a four-game losing streak in January, a world removed from the 2023-24 iteration of the Beavers. But for the players who stayed — Rees, Heide, Shuler, and AJ Marotte — continuing down that path was unacceptable. And their coach sees the magic in March as proof that something special is brewing in Corvallis.
This article originally appeared in The Athletic.
Oregon State Beavers, Portland Pilots, Women’s College Basketball
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