{"id":423739,"date":"2025-12-04T08:47:10","date_gmt":"2025-12-04T08:47:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/423739\/"},"modified":"2025-12-04T08:47:10","modified_gmt":"2025-12-04T08:47:10","slug":"scott-rueck-on-rivalry-game-with-oregon-if-it-were-up-to-me-we-wouldnt-be-playing-this-game","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/423739\/","title":{"rendered":"Scott Rueck on rivalry game with Oregon: \u2018If it were up to me, we wouldn\u2019t be playing this game\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

EUGENE \u2014 Count Oregon State<\/a> coach Scott Rueck among those not interested in continuing the rivalry series with Oregon<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf it were up to me,\u201d said Rueck, \u201cwe wouldn\u2019t be playing this game. Not yet.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rueck\u2019s team lost, 96-73<\/a>, to Kelly Graves\u2019 surging Ducks (10-0) on Wednesday night at Matthew Knight Arena. It was never particularly competitive, despite a bounce-back second half from the Beavers (5-4) which included winning the third quarter, 24-15.<\/p>\n

The 16th-year OSU head coach\u2019s view on the rivalry game doesn\u2019t appear to be rooted in sour grapes. He continually gave Graves and the Ducks credit for a performance Wednesday night that included shooting 68% from the field and forcing 22 turnovers.<\/p>\n

This is a long-held view of Rueck\u2019s since the Pac-12 imploded, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have too much respect for the rivalry to play it in this current condition,\u201d Rueck said. \u201cI\u2019d give us a few more years to get our bearings before I would bring this back, and that\u2019s in respect to everyone involved, actually.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Beavers were picked to win the West Coast Conference and own a win over a Big Ten opponent (Illinois) this season. But they\u2019re still figuring things out. And the talent gap was evident Wednesday night as Ducks guard Katie Fiso zipped passes in and around the OSU defense for a career-high 14 assists to go along with 23 points.<\/p>\n

Fiso, from the Seattle area, was a one-time OSU recruit. OSU staff said there are photos somewhere of Fiso in Beavers gear.<\/p>\n

Now, she\u2019s represented by Klutch Sports. LeBron\u2019s agency.<\/p>\n

Still, there was some local flair to Wednesday\u2019s contest. OSU\u2019s Tiara Bolden is from Eugene, and teammate Kennedie Shuler \u2014 a former preps star for Sam Barlow in Portland \u2014 made her second career appearance on the tree-lined floor in Eugene.<\/p>\n

Washington State transfer Jenna Villa, who led the Beavers with a career-high 27 points, played against Fiso on the high school circuit in Washington.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019d have to ask them what it means right now,\u201d Rueck said. \u201cI\u2019m sure for Tiara, it was special to come home to Eugene. Kennedie played in it as a freshman when we were all in the Pac-12 still. And so, to me, it\u2019s just at the moment, it\u2019s just a non-conference game. And I probably would\u2019ve gone somewhere else with this game, were it up to me.\u201d<\/p>\n

OSU and Oregon made the tournament last season, but the Ducks beat a Vanderbilt team in the first round last year that just dominated Rueck\u2019s team, 88-66, in the Paradise Jam tournament down in the U.S. Virgin Islands.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not that OSU can\u2019t compete with teams of Vanderbilt or Oregon\u2019s caliber \u2014 the second half Wednesday was proof. It\u2019s about preserving something meaningful while the gap is wider than it\u2019s ever been, Rueck said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it should just be put on hold for a minute as we\u2019re recalibrating,\u201d Rueck said. \u201cObviously going from the same conference to different conferences. There\u2019s too much unrest right now in our world that we\u2019re trying to stabilize to enter back into something that\u2019s been so special for so long for those of us who\u2019ve been a part of it our entire life.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor me, where that\u2019s the case, I\u2019d say, let\u2019s pause this for a few years. Let\u2019s get our bearings back, and then let\u2019s talk about re-upping. That just seems to me, from day one, that seemed like the right thing to do.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"EUGENE \u2014 Count Oregon State coach Scott Rueck among those not interested in continuing the rivalry series with…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":423740,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[2076,197652,62,67,132,68,3357],"class_list":{"0":"post-423739","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-college-basketball","9":"tag-oregon-state-basketball","10":"tag-sports","11":"tag-united-states","12":"tag-unitedstates","13":"tag-us","14":"tag-womens-basketball"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115660432716261548","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/423739","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=423739"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/423739\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/423740"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=423739"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=423739"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=423739"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}