Oregon State is paying Craig Robinson the equivalent of $2,548 per day not to coach the Beavers basketball team this season.
It then hired Wayne Tinkle away from Montana and put him on the payroll (for $2,191 a day), all of which means the Beavers are spending $1.73 million on head coaches, or roughly $50,882 for every point the Beavers scored Friday night.
At times it seemed like $5.8 million per point.
Watching Oregon State play basketball is like Ben Stein calling the roll in Ferris Buellerβs Day Off. Pretty soon, youβre drooling.
Arizona overcame Oregon Stateβs sphinx-like offense and coma-inducing zone defense, winning 57-34, and by the time it was over, all 14,655 in attendance knew what a fossil feels like.
It was such a grind that OSU had more turnovers, 17, than baskets, 14. How often is it that the statistic of the game is that T.J. McConnell had eight steals?
Do you love numbers? Oregon State turned the ball over on 28.3ββpercent of its possessions and shot 28.6 percent from the field.
If you stayed awake in front of your TV set, you might have wondered why some Pac-12 analysts have been stumping for Tinkle as the leagueβs Coach of the Year.
Much of it because, in early October, Tinkle invited 22 young men from the OSU student body to a tryout camp at Gill Coliseum.
Who holds student body tryouts any more?
In what must be an NCAA record, Tinkle signed five players from that camp β A.J. Hedgecock; Dylan Livesay; Matt Dahlen; Bryan Boswell; Tanner Sanders β and put them on the team. Two of them are ex-OSU football players.
So when the Beavers walked into McKale Center on Friday at 14-6 overall, which included a Corvallis-slaying of Arizona, you gave Tinkle his due.
He is making this up as he goes and, at least until Friday, was on pace to be the fourth Pac-12 coach to become the leagueβs Coach of the Year in his first season.
The last guy to do so was Tony Bennett at Washington State, whose style of play was also slow-and-slower, and he eventually won so much that Virginia hired him away, and today his club is 19-0 and ranked No. 2.
It doesnβt mean you have to enjoy it, though.
There seemed to be an audible groan at McKale Center every time the Beavers got possession, or grabbed an offensive rebound, because you feared it might be 35 seconds before anything happened.
Hey, it was Friday night. Live a little.
This style has worked for Tinkle, although it has its limits. His three Montana NCAA tournament teams scored 34, 49 and 57 points and lost all three.
On the nights the Beavers canβt shoot straight β or have bumped into defensive bloodhounds like McConnell β they have lost to, ahem, Quinnipiac, have scored just 43 in a loss at Washington and were blown to smithereens two days earlier at Arizona State.
βItβs not a bad day at the office,β said McConnell. βWe won, and thatβs all I care about.β
In all, OSUβs swing through the state resulted in two losses, an aggregate score of 130-89 and the discovery that once you hit the road, youβre likely to get popped in the mouth.
Tinkleβs first visit at McKale left an impression. He nominated McConnell as the Pac-12βs Player of the Year.
βHe is everything to this team,β Tinkle said.
Miller amplified McConnellβs importance, suggesting that you can watch Arizona play at McKale for the next 50 years and probably not see someone with eight steals in a game.
βAnd he only played 30 minutes,β said Miller.
So, yes, it was a game of steals and a game of wills, and Arizona won both.
There have been less artistic nights at McKale: In Lute Olsonβs first season, Oregon Ducks coach Don Monson ordered a shoot-as-a-last-resort offense, and the Ducks won 43-40.
But that was 31 years ago. There wasnβt even a 35-second shot clock then.
Oregon State has tried almost every tactical option at McKale Center in the last 29 years, in which the Beavers are 1-28 here. Every OSU coach who passed through McKale β including Jimmy Anderson, who in 1990 was the Pac-10 Coach of the Year in his rookie season β ultimately hit the same McKale wall.
Not one to spend time puffing up his chest, Miller chose to speak well of the Beavers.
βOregon State plays an excellent zone; itβs very important I give them the credit they deserve,β he said. βThere arenβt many teams in the country who will have their way with them.β
βNot many teams are going to be that deliberate who are in the (NCAA) tournament. Not that slow, no.β
By getting swept in Arizona for the 21st time in 24 years, the shine is off OSUβs out-of-nowhere bid to become an NCAA tournament team, and Tinkleβs candidacy for Coach of the Year is entering the kaput zone.
For Arizona, its loss at Corvallis can be forgotten, and its fans can be happy that the Beavers arenβt on the home schedule for another year.
