Beavers’ Tinkle: ‘I’m still in coach mode. Let’s ride it out’

Wayne Tinkle’s 12-year reign as Oregon State’s basketball coach is over at the end of the season, but says he is grateful for the opportunities the school has given to him and his family” (courtesy OSU sports communications)

The voice sounded strong, upbeat, as Wayne Tinkle spoke with me via telephone Monday afternoon.

He didn’t sound like a coach who had been fired four days earlier.

“I’m doing good,” Tinkle said. “I’m still in coach mode. The tournament is around the corner.”

The WCC Tournament will be the swan song for Tinkle as Oregon State’s basketball coach. He was fired by athletic director Scott Barnes on Thursday, hours after his final regular-season victory with the Beavers, 92-82 in overtime. Attendance at Gill Coliseum for that one was 2,626. Barnes did not immediately respond to an interview request after Tinkle’s dismissal, but apathy for the program had to be a major factor.

Barnes met with Tinkle Thursday morning to deliver the news. The AD gave Tinkle the option to leave the job immediately or to coach the rest of the schedule — Saturday’s regular-season finale at Santa Clara and the WCC tourney, however many games that will be.

“I needed a little time,” Tinkle told me. He informed members of his coaching staff — assistants Marlon Stewart, Stephen Thompson, Chris Haslam and Roberto Nelson, and Ryan Lawrence, director of basketball operations — and then met with the players.

“There were a lot of emotions there,” Tinkle said. “I told them what I had to consider.”

I asked Nelson about the players’ reaction to the plight of their coach.

“They were surprised,” Nelson said. “Sad. They were caught off guard. The guys didn’t like the news they had been told.”

Tinkle headed home for a couple of hours. “Got away from the emotions of it,” he said. He talked it over with his wife, Lisa. Then his phone began to blow up.

“It was boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!” Tinkle said. “Players reaching out, saying they came here to play under me, and that they wanted me to stick with them until the end of the ride.”

Later that afternoon, Tinkle held an impromptu team meeting.

“I made it clear that we were going to keep the band together until the time was out,” he said. “One thing I have always said, I am going to do it until they tell me it is time to stop. They gave me the option to stay to the end. Let’s ride it out.”

Tinkle, 60, has one year left on a contract that pays him $3 million next season. He could have taken the money and run. But in January, when I asked if he might consider retirement after this season, he said no.

“I am blessed with good health,” he said. “I know I have some great years ahead of me. … I am excited about the Pac-12 being resurrected next season. I certainly hope to be a part of it.”

Now Tinkle won’t be. But he had the constitution, and the character, to want to stay to the end. He also had the backing of his players, several of whom shouted out heart-felt thanks to their coach via social media over the weekend.

I asked Tinkle if he felt his presence in the coaching box would in any way be a distraction to his players.

“I hope not,” he said. “When I was making the decision to coach or not, what I had to weigh was would they rally knowing I was going to be the coach, or would they rally if I got myself out of the way? The outreach by the players made it clear that they wanted me to go to the finish. That is what I wanted, too. I wasn’t going to walk away from them.”

The Beavers had won six of their final eight games before Tinkle’s dismissal. On Saturday, they hung in for a half before falling 93-72 at Santa Clara, which finished the WCC schedule with a sterling 15-3 record.

The Dean of Portland Sports is now on BlueSky.

“It might have been a more difficult decision (to continue coaching) six weeks ago,” Tinkle said. “But the way (the players) have rallied and pulled together has been inspiring. The past few weeks, we have been playing our best basketball. They are giving their best to the very end. It helped make it a much easier decision.”

Less than two weeks ago, in a story with Barnes, I asked about Tinkle's status. His response: "He and I are talking and evaluating. We will make a decision at the end of the year. That is all I can say."

What changed? After our interview, the Beavers went 2-0 with wins over Pepperdine and San Diego prior to Barnes’ decision to let Tinkle go. Why not wait until after the WCC tournament to pull the trigger?

One school of thought: Barnes was contemplating firing Tinkle after the 2020-21 season, before the Beavers caught fire, won the Pac-12 Tournament and advanced to the Elite Eight. The AD didn’t want history to repeat itself. But if that were the case, why give Tinkle the option to continue coaching? A run to the NCAA Tournament this season would have made a dismissal look even worse.

Could the timing have been deflection on Barnes’ part from his own situation? A podcast called “The Belligerent Beavs” has been on the prowl about Barnes, former assistant AD Brent Blaylock and the Blueprint Sports fiasco for some time. Recently, the “The Belligerent Beavs” posted results from a public records request, a search that produced text messages that plot a very different course than Barnes would have had you believe when Blueprint was hired to handle OSU's NIL duties last summer. Those texts make it look like Barnes backstabbed Dam Nation operator Kyle Bjornstad in the process.

Barnes’ grounds for firing Tinkle would begin with the coach’s 176-205 record during his time at OSU. There were high moments — 19-13 and an NCAA Tournament berth his second season in 2015-16, the school’s first since 1990, and the magical Elite Eight run in 2020-21. Those seasons were followed by the worst in program history — 5-27 in 2016-17 after star forward Tres Tinkle, Wayne’s son, broke his foot, and 3-28 in 2021-22 after losing Ethan Thompson to graduation and flunking on a trio of recruits meant for reinforcements.

Take away those two dreadful campaigns and Tinkle’s career mark would be just over .500. Not bad, and better than any of his predecessors since the Ralph Miller era. But not a compelling reason to argue for a new contract for Tinkle, especially when the average attendance for 17 home games this season was 3,024. There is just not a lot of interest in the program from those in Beaver Nation.

The job at OSU is different than it was during Miller Time. Ancient Gill Coliseum, which opened its doors in 1949, does not provide a recruiting advantage. NIL, and now revenue-sharing funding, has made it difficult to maintain players.

Two years ago, Tinkle lost his two best players, sophomores Tyler Bilodeau and Jordan Pope. Bilodeau is now the best player at UCLA; Pope is a starting guard at Texas. After last season, all five starters departed, including All-WCC forward Michael Rataj, who got a seven-figure NIL deal at Baylor. Each of those players started for a D-1 program this season. Were those seven players still around for this season — heck, let’s say just Pope, Bilodeau and Rataj — Oregon State could have been a WCC title and NCAA Tournament threat.

Nelson, 35, is not far removed from his playing days at OSU. A sharpshooting guard from 2010-14 under Craig Robinson, Nelson still ranks sixth on the Beavers’ career scoring list with 1,745 points. For the past three seasons, he has served on Tinkle’s staff, developing a deep appreciation for the veteran mentor.

“Wayne is a great man,” Nelson said. “He works hard. He is the best coach I have seen at drawing up stuff during a game. He is like a maestro. He draws it up in his mind and then puts it on a board on the fly. In a 30-second timeout, he can dissect what (the defense is) doing and draw up a play that is successful. It is cool to watch. That is something I wish I had.”

Nelson, as with the other OSU assistants, is now out of a job. That hurts, but he also hurts for Tinkle.

“Wayne is not an alum, but he cares about Oregon State,” Nelson said. “In his heart, he is a Beaver. He loves it here. He loves the people here.

“I don’t know that it will be better with a new coach. I don’t see a better coach out there than Wayne.”

The hay is in the barn on that one. Now it is on Barnes to find a coach who can win in Corvallis in the new Pac-12.

There are alumni groups that are already lobbying for past greats Gary Payton and Lester Conner. Both have interest in the job. Payton, 57, and Conner, 66, are said to have contacts willing to bolster the NIL/revenue sharing situation with OSU basketball.

Barnes won’t be able to pay the new coach $3 million, but I don’t think salary would be an issue with Payton or Conner. Their names and pedigree would carry weight with recruits. They both love their alma mater and believe they could help restore some of the old magic. And yes, Conner now has a college degree; lack of it impeded his candidacy for the OSU job when Tinkle was hired in 2014.

Conner, though, has coached only a semi-pro team in Virginia since his 17-year run as an NBA assistant coach ended in 2015. Payton has college coaching experience, at Lincoln University in Oakland and the last two years at Alameda (Calif.) JC. That’s a bunch or rungs below even the new Pac-12.

I think Barnes is going to opt for a younger, up-and-coming coach, along the lines of a JaMarcus Shephard. I have no idea who that would be, but a salary of around $1 million fits an athletic program that is losing “$30-millionish” in conference distributions from what came out of the old Pac-12, according to Barnes.

For at least one more game, the coach is Tinkle. He doesn’t like that his time is just about up, but he is at peace with it.

“They have to make their decision,” he said. “I just know we will forever be grateful for the opportunities OSU has given our family — the memories with Tres, my daughters on the sidelines, my wife behind us. And all we have accomplished, academically and athletically. Far too many things to take with us to hold any bitterness.”

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