Oregon State Women’s Basketball: Beavers ready for Maui Showcase

The Oregon State women’s basketball team is getting an early Christmas present this week as OSU departed for Maui early Monday morning and will spend the week on the islands as they prepare for a two-game set against Eastern Washington (1-6) on Friday and Texas A&M (6-2) on Saturday.

“At this point, each different non-conference opponent provides a different challenge,” Oregon State head coach Scott Rueck said. “They’re all building towards conference play. Eastern Washington will provide their challenges and A&M will provide theirs. A couple of the weapons that A&M has are well known, so they’ll provide great challenges to us.”

While going to Hawaii with school out of session for winter break will certainly ease the minds of the players, Rueck feels that despite all distractions that a place like Hawaii can bring, his team will be focused and ready to go in everything they do over the course of the week, including spending time giving back to the community.

“Being in a beautiful place like Hawaii, with loads of distractions, will not distract this team,” Rueck said. “If you can come out focused like we did against Santa Clara post-finals week, go up to Vancouver and play for three days in a row and prep like we did, we won’t be distracted. I’m excited to enjoy the beauty of that place, get into the schools, do our community service activities, and be focused all the way through.”

Sophomore guard Destiny Slocum, who leads the team in points (15.0) and assists per game (6.4), feels that it’s a big bonus for the team that finals are out of the way, and that the team can focus on basketball, and giving back to the community.

“It’s really nice to not have school to worry about,” Slocum said. “Basketball is really important to us, but so is what is the most important thing about our culture, which is reaching out and affecting people in the way we can. Now we can put our all into the kids and basketball and how much better could it get?”

Junior guard Kat Tudor, who leads the Pac-12 in three-point makes per game at just over three, and is 10th in percentage at 47.3, echoed Slocum’s comments about just how much easier it is for the Beavers to have school on the shelf during this trip to Maui, with an intense focus on basketball and helping out the communities of Maui.

“We look forward to going to Hawaii every year, because what’s better than playing basketball and reaching out to the community in a place like that,” Tudor said with a big smile.

While the Beavers have been cruising as of late, with blowout wins over La Salle (100-46) and Santa Clara (82-31), Rueck is far from pleased with where the Beavers are at, noting that it’s his job to get them from good to great.

“I always tell the team, it doesn’t matter what the scoreboard says, I’m not here to coach to a scoreboard, I’m here to coach them and help them become great. We’re far from that and we have so much room to grow. We’re playing well, and have a lot of talent on this team and have shot the ball well, but the fine-tuning and all the little details when it comes to our run at the Pac-12 title this year, there’s a long ways to go.”

Added Tudor: “We need to get better at not turning the ball over quite as much. That has been one of our weaknesses. We need to be calmer with the ball and that will lead to less turnovers.”

While Eastern Washington doesn’t figure to offer OSU a very tough test as they sit at 1-6 on the season, Texas A&M certainly will as the Aggies play in the uber-talented SEC conference and have several very good players that will give the Beavers a test they haven’t seen in terms of competition since the Vancouver Showcase.

However, thanks to that top-tier competition the Beavers faced in Canada, OSU feels that they’re well-prepared for what they’ll see this weekend.

“We’ve played South Carolina and Notre Dame earlier this season, so we know how we can play against top-tier competition,” Tudor said. “It’s good that we’ve played those teams because now it’s more calming. If we play our brand of basketball, we’ll be in great shape.”

DON'T MISS: Get $99 in team gear when you sign up for an annual subscription! (WHILE SUPPLIES LAST)