The Oregon State Beavers' basketball history is a tale of golden ages — and this fall, the program turns the page on one of the most dramatic decades in its history. In late February 2026, athletic director Scott Barnes announced that Wayne Tinkle would not return for a 13th season, ending a 12-year run that produced both the 2021 Elite Eight miracle and the 3-28 crater that followed it. Tinkle finished 176-204 in Corvallis, and his departure clears the deck for a brand-new era in every sense: new head coach Justin Joyner — hired out of UC Santa Barbara — and a return to a rebuilt Pac-12 that brings Oregon State, Washington State, Gonzaga, Texas State, and several Mountain West schools back under one banner.
The Joyner era opens at Gill Coliseum with a roster built for the new league. Senior guard Josiah Lake II is the heart of the team — a Tualatin, Oregon native who started six of the final seven games in 2025-26, averaged 9.3 points per game, and shot a school-record 90.8 percent from the free-throw line. Junior guard Daniel Freitag, a Buffalo transfer from Bloomington, Minnesota, brings Big Ten experience to the backcourt. Up front, the Beavers have serious size: 7-foot-2 sophomore Peteris Pinnis, the Latvian big man who arrived via Providence; 7-foot redshirt junior Dennis Evans from Riverside, California, via Grand Canyon; and 7-foot-1 sophomore Xavion Staton, the Las Vegas native who transferred from BYU.
The pipeline runs international and local in equal measure. Kahu Treacher, a 6-foot-9 junior from Hastings, New Zealand, joins via Eastern Arizona College after representing New Zealand at FIBA youth tournaments — a tough, hard-nosed forward with real skill. Sophomore guard Legend Smiley (San Francisco transfer), senior guard Chris Johnson (UCF transfer), sophomore Jackson Rasmussen (Idaho), and sophomore forward DeShawn Gory (Fresno State) round out a deep rotation, with 6-foot-11 freshman Yabi Aklog and freshman guard Jemai Lake adding to the Tualatin pipeline. It's a roster with size, shooting, and experience — exactly the profile Joyner needs to make an immediate statement in the new Pac-12.
To understand what Oregon State basketball means, go back to the first golden age. Slats Gill — the namesake of Gill Coliseum — coached the Beavers to Final Fours in 1949 and 1963, banners that still hang in the old barn on the Willamette Valley floor. The second golden age arrived under Ralph Miller in the late 1970s and early 1980s, when Oregon State was a genuine national power: the 1980-81 Beavers spent time ranked No. 1 in the country, built on Miller's precision offense and suffocating defense, and the 1982 team reached the Elite Eight with Steve Johnson earning All-America honors.
The Miller era's brightest star was Gary Payton — 'The Glove' — who starred in Corvallis from 1986 to 1990 before his Hall of Fame NBA career with the Seattle SuperSonics. Payton's Beavers were pure theater: full-court pressure, relentless trash talk, and a swagger that made Gill Coliseum one of the toughest road environments on the West Coast. His No. 20 is iconic in the Pacific Northwest, and every great Beaver guard since has been measured against him.
Gill Coliseum itself is part of the identity. Opened in 1949 and named for Slats Gill, it's one of the great old barns in college basketball — intimate, loud, and dripping with history. When the Beavers are rolling and the student section is full, the noise stacks from the rafters down to the floorboards. The 2021 miracle run turned that barn into a cathedral: picked last in the Pac-12, 12th-seeded Oregon State ripped through the conference tournament and then March — beating Tennessee, Oklahoma State and future No. 1 NBA Draft pick Cade Cunningham, and Loyola Chicago — to reach the Elite Eight before Houston ended the dream. It was one of the great Cinderella stories of the decade, and it reminded everyone what Beaver basketball could be when belief met preparation.
What's happening now is a full reset with the stakes raised. The 2025-26 Beavers finished 16-14 overall and 9-8 in the West Coast Conference — fourth place, competitive but not memorable — and the administration decided that wasn't enough. The rebuilt Pac-12 puts Oregon State back on a national stage with Gonzaga and Washington State as permanent rivals, and Joyner's first roster gives him a legitimate shot at relevance from day one. The question hanging over Gill Coliseum is simple: can the Beavers recapture the 2021 magic, or at least the consistency of the Miller years? The Gill banners and the Payton swagger say it's possible. In Corvallis, the Beavers play like history matters — because it does.
The Beavers' new era also means a new spotlight. The rebuilt Pac-12 restores Oregon State's place on a real national stage — Gonzaga's machine, Washington State's rivalry, and a conference tournament that will actually matter in March. Gill Coliseum hasn't hosted stakes like that since the last Pac-12 days. For a fan base that still tells the 2021 story like it happened yesterday, the ingredients are all here again: a first-year coach with something to prove, a senior guard who never misses from the line, and a frontcourt full of seven-footers. In Corvallis, belief has always been the program's most dangerous weapon.