Looking back, looking ahead at OSU women’s hoops with Scott Rueck
Scott Rueck gets a Gatorade shower from his players after Oregon State won the West Coast Conference post-season tournament in March (courtesy OSU sports communications)
Updated 5/6/2025 1:02 AM
Next season has already started for Scott Rueck.
Through the spring, Rueck and his assistant coaches are allowed to work four hours a week with the returnees from Oregon State’s West Coast Conference champions of 2024-25. Recruits will arrive this summer, and the whole gang will come together in early September as they look ahead to the 2025-26 campaign.
This is all fun for Rueck, who loves to work with players on individual skills, which leads to development of the team as a whole, which leads to good on-court results.
Coaches are paid to win, and Rueck, 55, has done plenty of it during his 15 years at the OSU helm. There have been eight 20-win seasons, two 30-win seasons, three Pac-12 regular-season titles, 10 NCAA Tournaments, four Elite Eight and one Final Four finish. The pursuit of excellence and a potential national championship has been a driving force for the Hillsboro native and OSU grad.
But last season was a unique experience for Rueck, who developed and cajoled and molded and willed the ragtag 2024-25 Beavers to the WCC postseason tournament title and a spot in the Big Dance.
“It was magical — as cool and fun and rewarding as a season could be,” Rueck said this week in an interview in his office at the OSU basketball training facility. “I don’t know if I have had a team that progressed from Day One to the end as far as this one did. To take that to the point where you are cutting nets is pretty special.”
Beaver Nation knows the story. After guiding his 2023-24 team to a 27-8 record and the Elite Eight with no seniors, his top six scorers, and eight players in all, left via the transfer portal. Four returning reserves, along with redshirt Susan Yepes, formed the nucleus of a 2024-25 squad that included four transfers and two freshmen.
If Rueck mourned the loss of his stars, he did it privately. He and his assistants — Deven Hunter, Sydney Wiese, Eric Ely and grad aide Jared Vedus — dug in. It was rough at the start. There was little experience, and limited talent, to work with.
“We were thrown to the wolves in the preseason,” Rueck says.
Oregon State lost at Colorado State — its first season-opening loss in decades — then was trounced by Power Four foes Minnesota, Arizona State, Illinois and UConn. When the competition lessened, there were some wins. Along the way, Rueck surveyed the attitude of his players. He liked what he saw.
“The group was a fun one to be around every day,” he says. “They were very appreciative, they loved their experience and they loved each other. Even when we were dysfunctional competitively — we had some really rough stretches, head-scratching moments at times — there was still an enjoyment factor.
“You knew that the group was trying hard. They wanted to be good. They were taking advantage of the opportunity. They operated with a positivity.”
Senior AJ Marotte, the only returning starter, was the leader. “I give AJ the credit for creating that atmosphere,” Rueck says. Returning letter-winners Kelsey Rees, Kennedie Shuler and Sela Heide helped.
Kennedie Shuler proved herself as a sophomore point guard and will be the Beavers’ floor leader next season (courtesy OSU sports communications)
“They had won at such a high level the previous year, they knew what it could be and should be,” Rueck says. “Then it was bringing everybody to that level and them stepping up a little bit more. They were receptive to coaching. We operated at our limits for most of the year. We were grinding so hard to make up for the lack of experience and, in some ways, lack of ability. It was hard. But everybody was all in, and look what happened.”
In late December, OSU had grind-it-out wins over Gonzaga and Portland. Then there were some ups and downs and, in late January, four straight losses. Then the Beavers beat Pepperdine and crushed Saint Mary’s 80-45.
“We all of a sudden became a good team,” Rueck says. “And then it was a matter of becoming more consistent. Once that hit, we were a tough out. Our two losses after that (aside from the 70-49 setback against North Carolina in the NCAA Tournament) were the Gonzaga game (66-62 Zags), which could have easily gone our way, and the 19-point lead we somehow gave up at Saint Mary’s (69-66 Gaels).”
Especially early, the Beavers won with defense and rebounding. They held opponents to .381 shooting from the field and .321 from 3-point range. Led by Rees, Heide and Catarina Ferreira, they were plus-6.4 in the rebound department.
Catarina Ferreira, a transfer from Baylor, began the season on the bench and finished it as the Beavers’ most valuable player (courtesy OSU sports communications)
“We lost our way defensively a couple of years ago, but (the 2023-24) team switched that around and bought into it again,” Rueck says. “This past season, our returnees didn’t forget that. They knew we had to have that, and it was a staple from the beginning. We actually had a pretty athletic team — one of the more athletic teams I have coached. With the good athleticism, we had to be a good defensive team.”
Offense was a different story. The Beavers shot only .409 from the field and .283 from the 3-point line. The previous season, the numbers were .462 and .359. Turnovers, too, were a problem — an average of 15.7, minus-4.2 per contest.
The first two-thirds of the season, “we were not even close to a good offensive team,” Rueck says. “It may have been our lack of understanding, of concepts. We didn’t see the floor very well. We didn’t move the ball like an Oregon State team. We weren’t a team of terrible shooters, but the way we executed made us worse than we were. We would shoot well in practice, but we would get in games and the ball would stick, it wouldn’t move, and because of that we shot poorly. That is the same reason we had so many turnovers.”
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Rueck says he maintained patience.
“I knew that would change as the season went on,” he says. “We just had to stick with it. The strength of our schedule early didn’t help us in that regard. It probably messed with (the players’) confidence.”
On Feb. 1, the Beavers drubbed Saint Mary’s at home, shooting .500 from the field while piling up 20 assists with five turnovers.
“That is the day everything changed for our team,” Rueck says. “Starting with that game, the ball moved. The players understood the ball can’t stick in their hands. Got to move it faster than the defense can catch up.”
Over the next 11 games, Oregon State shot .424 from the field and .384 from beyond the arc.
The Pac-12 had been such a great women’s basketball conference. After his first season at the helm, Rueck’s teams had always been competitive and, for a spell, dominant. And then it was gone, and in its place, a much lesser league in terms of talent and national recognition.
Rueck has always relished a chance to play the best. Now the situation had changed. How did he feel about it?
“None of us signed up for it, but there we were, so it was, ‘Make the most of it,’ ” he says. “I always respected (the WCC). It was just … different.”
The veteran OSU coach says he enjoyed the process of getting to know the various coaches and programs he faced.
“We played in a bunch of venues I had not been in,” he says.
One of them was the University of San Francisco’s Sobrato Center, which opened for play in 1958. The grandfather of Rueck’s wife Kerry was Phil Woolpert, the coach of the Dons from 1950-59 who won a pair of NCAA championships with the great Bill Russell. Woolpert is a member of the Basketball Hall of Fame. When Oregon State played at USF, Rueck saw Russell’s No. 6 jersey hanging from the rafters.
“To know that Kerry’s grandpa recruited and coached him … it’s one of those neat things,” Rueck says. “That arena was built because of his success.”
•
Now it is on to another season. The news is mostly good on that front.
Graduating seniors Marotte, Rees and Heide are gone, but the other nine squad members returned. That’s right — after losing most of his team the previous season to the transfer portal, Rueck lost nobody this time.
He says during exit interviews with players with remaining eligibility, “It was like, ‘I am excited for next year. I love it here.’ That is what I was used to hearing through the years. To have all nine back is beautiful.
“It feels like we are back in business. We have traditionally had pretty happy teams at Oregon State, but we have been through so much disruption (in recent years). Covid happened and conference realignment happened and we had disruption. Now we will have a chance for the consistency good teams usually have. Then it is finding the pieces that go with them so we can have a shot at cutting nets down again.”
The Beavers are adding five new players to the mix, including three Australians — freshmen Katelyn Field and Keira Lindemans, both from Melbourne, and 6-5 senior Lizzy Williamson, a native of Adelaide who will transfer from North Carolina State. (Rueck can’t talk about Williamson until she signs an official letter-of-intent).
Rueck calls the 5-9 Field “a 3-point assassin.”
“Catch-and-shoot is her specialty,” he says. “I love her shot. She shoots it high, gets rid of it quick. And I like her ability to take it off the bounce.”
The 6-1 Lindemans is a “big guard who is physical,” Rueck says.
“She is very aggressive,” he says. “I love her ability to impact the game all over the court. She shoots the 3, sees the floor well and is a rebounder/defender.”
Oregon State is Williamson’s fourth school. She started at Utah State, played two seasons at Southern Utah and was at NC State for two years, though she played sparingly, missing last season after an undisclosed surgery. In her seventh season of college, she at least provides depth for Rueck at the pivot.
So will Nene Sow, a 6-8 senior transfer from Utah and a native of Belgium. Her coach at Utah was Lynne Roberts, now the head coach of the WNBA L.A. Sparks. Roberts coached Rees before she transferred to OSU. Sow played sparingly as a junior for the Utes.
“Lynne had seen what we did with Kelsey and also with Sela, who hadn’t played at all at Cal (her previous school),” Rueck says. “She called and said, ‘You should be interested in Nene. She didn’t fit our system; she does fit yours.’ That gave me confidence that this player who hasn’t played much yet has a chance. I love that challenge. Seemed like a no-brainer.”
The other newcomer is 6-1 junior Jenna Villa, a transfer from Washington State, where she averaged 5.6 points as a most-of-the-time starter last season. The Arlington, Wash., native was her state’s Gatorade Player of the Year in 2023.
“I have watched Jenna play forever,” Rueck says. “When she was coming out of high school, we didn’t have a need for Jenna. We were stocked at the guard position. She was good enough to play, but I couldn’t promise her playing time, and she needed to go where there was opportunity.
“Things change. She was looking for a different opportunity. It was one phone call and done. I like her catch-and-shoot, but she proved this year she is more than that. She can go inside. She has a physicality to her game. And she has grown defensively, and that was my question with her out of high school. (Her skills are) very similar to those of (Marotte). She doesn’t have AJ’s pull-up, but is a better 3-point shooter.”
One other player will be new to Beaver Nation next season. Mackenzie Shivers, a 5-6 point guard, was a transfer from Mesa (Ariz.) JC who figured to be a rotation player last season, but she had ACL knee surgery and missed the season. She had the same procedure done on her other knee as a freshman at Mesa. Rueck says Shivers is rehabbing nicely and has been cleared for full contact in September. On the day we talked, Rueck had a personal workout with her.
“She went off both legs just fine,” he says. “Everything is ahead of schedule. She has the ability to put up big (offensive) numbers and is a gritty defensive player. When she went down, we lost a player who understands the game at a high level. She is a point who can play off the ball as well. Very fundamentally sound.”
Late last season came the news that both Ferreira and guard Tiara Bolden, who had been granted an additional season of eligibility, had chosen to stay at OSU.
“I had not checked with them during the season,” Rueck says. “I didn’t bring it up. I don’t know why I didn’t. Then we get close to Senior Day and people are talking about them wanting to come back. And I am like, ‘We would love to have them,’ but I hadn’t talked to them.”
Finally, OSU’s game management people needed to know for Senior Day: Would Ferreira and Bolden be among the graduating seniors to be honored?
“I’m sitting in my office one morning,” Rueck says. “They showed up at the door together and asked if we could talk for a minute. They said they wanted to come back. I was so happy.”
On the day we talked, Rueck also had a personal workout with Bolden, who started 31 of 35 games and averaged 8.1 points and 3.9 rebounds in her first season with OSU after transferring from La Salle.
“If a transfer comes in (as a senior) and you have one year to work with her, she shows up in July and everything has to be done from a team concept (point of view),” he says. “You don’t really have time to focus on individual skills in detail. To break down a shot and make slight adjustments? That’s what the spring is about. I wouldn’t have had that time with her. I am so grateful to have another year with Tiara and Cat. They are both talented, and we want to work with people who have that level of potential.”
Ferreira, a 6-foot Brazilian, played sparingly the previous season at Baylor and began last season coming off the bench for the Beavers. She soon worked her way into the starting lineup and finished the season averaging 9.9 points and 7.3 rebounds, was instrumental in the WCC tourney success and claimed the team’s Most Valuable Player Award.
“She is an elite athlete, and you would see ‘wow’ moments right from the start,” Rueck says. “I remember a spin move she made in practice one day early in the year, and I was like, ‘I have never seen anything that quick or amazing in this gym,’ and we’ve coached some great people. But you are like, ‘Why am I not always seeing that?’
“Cat was a role player at Baylor, playing spot minutes, and that is hard. You get into some habits of feeling like you don’t matter. You are not grinding every day. I know she wants to be a pro. I know what that takes. That was my common-thread talk with her. ‘I am here to help make you a pro. Here is what the pro coaches are going to want to see. They are going to want to see consistency.’ ”
Early in the season, Rueck says, Ferreira doubted her shooting abilities.
“She would hesitate to take a shot,” he says. “Her mid-range (shot) was non-existent. And finishing at the rim had to improve immediately. Bless her heart for being so coachable and having the humility that it takes to look in the mirror and say, ‘This coaching staff has something that can help me. They are wanting to invest in me; now I have to let them do it.’ And she did. It was a beautiful progression that led to an MVP award.”
Oregon State’s most improved player through last season was Shuler, a 5-6 point guard from Barlow High who was an excellent floor leader who averaged 7.9 points and a team-high 3.7 assists in her first season as a starter. Shuler hit some big shots in clutch moments for the Beavers but was often reluctant to shoot. She needs to improve her 3-point shot (.210 last season) and look for her own mid-range shot more next season.
Ally Schimel was one of the great stories of last season at Oregon State. The 5-10 walk-on from 3A Corbett High became not only a scholarship player but also second player off the bench for the Beavers as a freshman. Mostly, she deferred to veterans at the offensive end. Her mission next season: Don’t just blend in. Don’t settle for standing at the perimeter and passing the ball away when you get it. Use your considerable talents.
“Ally has some natural gifts,” Rueck says. “Nobody can really understand what it is like to go from off the grid — small high school, with offers only from D-3 and NAIA schools — to being thrown into a game in Gill Coliseum and how big a jump that is, mostly mentally. I couldn’t have been more impressed by her courage to step into that. There were times when she was passive, but when we needed it, she had her moments. “She has massive room for impact, especially around the rim. She handles the ball well enough to go anywhere she wants. She learned this year to use a ball-screen. She has the ability to not only do things but at a high level — to knock down the mid-range, to shoot over the top of a ball screen, to be a playmaker.”
Unlike most of the big-time college programs these days, Rueck’s teams have almost always focused on “bigs.” With Williamson, Sow and 6-5 redshirt freshman Elisa Mehyar in tow, he will have plenty to work with. Rueck says Mehyar will have a chance to earn a spot in the rotation.
“She is very raw, a great athlete with long arms and big hands, and a brilliant mind,” he says. “She is a baby learning how to play.”
Not only was inexperience a problem early last season, but so, too, was language, with so many foreign players.
“A lot of the journey was trying to understand how much each of our players were understanding,” Rueck says with a laugh. “Now, everybody speaks English as basically a first language. We will be way down the road in that regard and able to hit the ground running.”
•
Rueck, shown here being greeted by Beaver Nation upon his return to Corvallis following the WCC tourney, says he has never seriously considered leaving Oregon State (courtesy OSU sports communications)
Rueck’s coaching staff from a year ago returns intact. When I ask him if he will hire one more assistant — a position could be made available — he says, “I don’t know yet.”
But he wants to talk about what he calls “the underrated story of the year for us.”
It starts with Deven Hunter, the former star forward on the 2016 Final Four team who will be in her fifth season on the coaching staff and is now Rueck’s lead assistant. He calls her “the glue.”
“She has such a high motor for productivity,” he says. “She puts on the Thanksgiving party at her house, creates Secret Santa for Christmas season, oversees recruiting and our summer camp, does scouts and coaches our ‘bigs’ with Eric (Ely). She is always a step ahead and sees my needs and addresses them before I can get to it. Deven is just like she was as a player — an unsung hero.”
The addition of Sydney Wiese — one of the all-time greats in OSU women’s hoop history — last season was a huge bonus for the Beaver players. Her expertise gathered through playing five WNBA seasons along with her experience playing professionally overseas was invaluable.
“I had been trying to get her back ever since she graduated,” Rueck says. “It was a massive blessing to get to add her to the staff — perfect timing. She is a gem. Every day is fun with Syd.”
Ely might be the most popular person in the program, and one of the most versatile. He has served as both an assistant and director of player personnel/assistant to the head coach. Whatever Rueck needs, Ely is willing to fulfill that duty.
Then there is Vedus, the grad intern and Barlow grad who had been a scout-team player, scrimmaging against the Beaver women for three years as an undergrad.
“Jared was the best shooter in the gym every day,” Rueck says. “A year ago, he was a video coordinator. This year I gave him some ‘scouts’ (scouting reports on opponents), because he wants to coach. He is a detail guy. He gets the game and gets me. Deven, Syd and Jared split the scouts. They did such a great job, learning how to communicate. It was teacher education.”
When I ask Rueck about the NIL and transfer portal, he shrugs.
“It’s the way things are going, so I don’t fight it,” he says. “There are other circumstances that have been more impactful to us. Conference realignment was the most. The Covid era was tough for us. When school closed down, our (players) at that moment (were) all across the country. It was the most spread-out area I had ever recruited from. That led to some disruption as well.
“The NIL era makes sense to me in its purest form. Why should someone not be able to capitalize on who they are in a way that they want to? To tell them they can’t doesn’t seem reasonable to me.”
Still, there seems to be an unfair element to a coaching staff recruiting, nurturing and developing players for years and then having them purchased away by another program.
“That’s life,” Rueck says, adding that NIL funds “wasn’t the deciding factor in any of our lost players (from the 2023-24 team).”
Do the Beavers have sufficient NIL funding to keep their players and attract others?
“Yes,” he said. “We are here to compete and play in every category.”
Does playing in the new conference, with a move over to the new Pac-12 for the 2026-27 season, limit Rueck in recruiting?
“The uncertainty around it has, absolutely,” he says. “The most challenging thing for me is to try to explain (to recruits) who we are and where we are going to be in two years. I don’t have the answer. Nobody can give me an answer. Why wouldn’t a student want to know that? Of course they want to know that. If I can’t answer it, why would they choose us? And I can’t blame them. So we have been waiting for certainty, waiting to know where we will be, who we are, where you can find us, and in the meantime surviving.”
The new Pac-12 stands at seven schools, eight in basketball with the addition of Gonzaga.
“It is not complete yet,” Rueck says. “We don’t know exactly who will all be (members). The finances surrounding it are still to be determined. The media rights are still to be determined. We still have all these questions unanswered.
“I think (the end result) is going to be good. I have been told to be encouraged by it. Because of that, I am encouraged, but there are still question marks. What I assume is, the media rights deal will be better than any of the schools have had other than us and Washington State. And therefore, those programs will all get better. The media rights deal will be positive because of that; the visibility will be positive because of that. It has a chance to be an excellent conference.”
Over the past decade, Rueck has had legitimate goals to go deep into the NCAA Tournament, to reach the Final Four and perhaps beyond. Is that reasonable now? Has he had to adjust goals for his team?
“No,” he says. “I expect us to reach our potential, just like I do every year. When you have been doing it as long as I have … that’s the part of the journey I love.
“I don’t know if we can cut a net every year. I don’t know if we are capable of knowing how each team will evolve. That’s why this year was so enjoyable. This team red-lined on its potential. That is what I want next year. Everybody has more to prove. Everybody needs to step up. The new people need to fit in. Our culture needs to remain, which I am confident it will. For next year’s team, my goal is that we reach our potential, and it becomes one of those great stories again.”
After the Pac-12 dissolved and his best players departed, Rueck’s credentials could have gotten him another job at a Power Four school. He chose to stay at Oregon State. Why?
“I love it here,” Rueck says. Then he tells a story that he has told before, about a conversation he had with former Oregon State football coach Mike Riley in 2010 while Rueck was still at George Fox, interviewing for the OSU coaching job. Riley, a Corvallis native who wound up coaching the Beavers for 14 years, had started his career in the Northwest Conference at Whitworth and Linfield.
“I called Mike,” Rueck says. “I knew he understood small schools. I was very happy at George Fox, and I told him that. He told me, ‘If you’re happy, stay happy.’ ”
But Riley also told Rueck that Oregon State was a great place to coach.
“In Corvallis, you can be a great dad, you can be a great husband, you can meet your goals coaching here,” Riley told Rueck. “Corvallis is a place where you can play against the best and still have a life. There is no better place to do it than here.”
“That was something that never left my brain,” Rueck says. “The longer I have been here, the more I think Mike was right. All those things can happen. There is a quality of life here that is really difficult for anybody outside to understand. I know this is a great fit for me. I am not saying it’s the only fit — never say never. I didn’t think I would ever leave Fox.
“But I am very happy here. The world is so uncertain, so unstable. Who knows what it will be like in two years? I love to teach, I love to coach. This is my school. I love the town, I love the state, a state I have lived in my whole life. Why screw that up and let my ego get in the way?”
Oregon State’s 2025-26 roster
Tiara Bolden, 5-11 senior
Catarina Ferreira, 6-foot senior
Susana Yepes, 6-foot senior
Kennedie Shuler, 5-10 junior
Mackenzie Shivers, 5-6 junior
Ally Schimel, 5-10 sophomore
Cloe Vecina, 5-8 sophomore
Lucia Navarro, 6-foot sophomore
Elisa Mehyar, 6-5 redshirt freshman
Katelyn Field, 5-9 freshman, Melbourne, Australia
Keira Lindemans, 6-1 freshman, Melbourne, Australia
Lizzy Williamson, 6-5 senior transfer, Adelaide Australia (NC State)
Jenna Villa, 6-1 junior transfer (Washington State)
Nene Sow, 6-8 senior transfer (Utah)
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