Arizona basketball probably won't be sad to bid Gill Coliseum farewell when Pac-12 splits up

Of all the schools Arizona will disassociate with after the Pac-12 breaks up this spring, a few have venues the Wildcats don’t figure to visit again anytime soon.

Or maybe, barring another round of realignment that somehow brings the Pac back together, never again.

Gill Coliseum is one of those places.

Something of an engineering marvel when it opened in 1949 because it had no internal arch structures to hinder spectators’ views, Oregon State’s venerable fieldhouse today still features wood bleachers in the upper sections, bare cement stairwells teams must run down to reach their locker rooms and overhead piping that shadows you everywhere in the corridors.

There are murals and posters of Beavers past and present all over the place, including, of course, Gary Payton, Gary Payton II and legendary former coach Ralph Miller.

It’s creaky, atmospheric and, for Arizona over the years, somewhat scary, too.

While the Wildcats haven’t had much trouble in Corvallis lately, ever since Bennedict Mathurin led UA to a 34-point win over the Elite Eight-bound Beavers by pouring in 31 points in his first start of the 2020-21 “COVID” season, they have stumbled there many times before.

Arizona has lost 15 times at Gill since the Wildcats joined the Pac-12 in 1978-79, often when facing the Beavers before a presumably bigger game against Oregon — or in a letdown situation just after a big game with the Ducks.

“It’s a historic building and when Ralph Miller was there, they were one of the top teams in the country,” says UA associate head coach Jack Murphy, who began his career as a longtime aide for former UA coach Lute Olson. “I just remember back with Coach Olson we always had battles there. It was never easy to play there.”

It was so difficult that even the defending national champion Wildcats needed Miles Simon to race nearly coast-to-coast and sink a buzzer-beater from the foul line to beat the Beavers in 1997-98, two days before an Oregon game, and the Beavers earned payback a year later with a one-point win.

That was the first of three games in Corvallis that were each decided by a single point. Oregon State won 60-59 in 1998-99, when Beaver guard Deaundra Tanner helped hold Jason Terry to just five points and hit a running jumper with 28.3 seconds left.

Then OSU pulled out a 70-69 stunner against the third-ranked Wildcats in 1999-2000, when Tanner this time hit a game-winning 3-point buzzer beater for the win.

“Deaundra Tanner,” Murphy said. “I’ll never forget that name.”

In the 1999-2000 game, Tanner was freed up briefly in the corner when Arizona’s Gilbert Arenas moved inside to double team OSU center Jason Heide, who initially bobbled it but fired it back to Tanner to set up the dramatic game-winner.

Fans stormed the court within seconds. Fifteen years later, Tanner told the Oregonian that the shot “sealed me in Oregon State history.”

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Two other less-powerful UA teams toward the end of the Olson era also lost at Gill, in 2003-04 and 2005-06, by Beaver teams that were somewhat ironically coached then by Jay John, a former Olson assistant who is also a Tucson native and UA graduate.

The Wildcats of 2008-09, led that season by interim head coach Russ Pennell, escaped Corvallis just 56-53, while both of Sean Miller’s first two UA teams were greeted there with losses.

OSU guard Jared Cunningham even helped decorate the Beavers’ 76-75 win over the Elite Eight bound Wildcats of 2010-11 with a one-handed, high-flying dunk in which TV play-by-play announcer Kevin Calabro yelled gushingly that “Jared Cunningham kisses the sky!”

OSU also pulled off a 58-56 stunner over one of Miller’s best teams in 2014-15, when the Beavers were picked to finish last in the Pac-12 during what was Wayne Tinkle’s first season as their head coach.

“Um, what can I say?” Tinkle said at the beginning of his postgame news conference that night.

Tinkle’s Beavers also beat a UA team led by the freshman trio of Nico Mannion, Josh Green and Zeke Nnaji in 2019-20, but since then, the Wildcats have won three straight in Corvallis, all by double digits, and UA coach Tommy Lloyd is looking to make it four in a row.

Never mind that the Wildcats, as they have so many times before, face an Oregon team on Saturday that is tied with Arizona and ASU atop the Pac-12 standings at 5-2.

“There’s no trap games for us right now,” Lloyd said. “We have to go play well on the road. We know that. If you’re in a position to compete for a conference championship, you’ve got to go make things happen.

“So you got to go win at Oregon State to stay in that position with the teams you’re tied with. I’m not looking at it any more complicated than that. There’s no looking past Oregon State to get to Oregon.”

There’s another motivation: The Wildcats have only won two of their four true road games this season, and none since they beat California 100-81 on Dec. 29 in Berkeley.

That’s why Murphy says it shouldn’t be hard for them to stay in the moment Thursday.

“Not when you’ve lost two in a row on the road,” Murphy said. “We lost at Stanford and at Washington State. So our focus better be on Oregon State.”

History says it better be, too. Or else the Wildcats’ last memory at Gill could be another painful one.