Wayne Tinkle Praises His Team's Fight in Comeback Win: "This is gonna be a special group."
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On Wednesday night, Oregon State men's basketball moved to 3-0 on the year with a furious rally to beat the North Texas Mean Green 66-64.
The win was particularly encouraging for Beavers head coach Wayne Tinkle, who leads his team into a non-conference matchup with the Oregon Ducks on Monday.
Tinkle spoke to local reporters about what went right on Wednesday to get things where they needed to be.
Opening Statement to reporters:
"Proud of our guys for hanging in there, that's a really good basketball team North Texas. It wasn't very pretty, but we came into halftime and we wrote a symbol on the board, one symbol that's basically at the nut of everything we're about as Beavers. I'm not gonna share what it was, but our guys resonded to it."
"Did we get some breaks down the stretch? Yup. But when you play your a***s off and play together and put up a fight, you earn those breaks. You saw us we got to the rim, we got fouled, we got to the free throw line, we set up our press. It was just a clinic from these guys. For this early in the season, to deliver that kind of stuff at the end of a game for us. That's three games in a row that we've had to pull it out last minute."
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The Crowd really got into it there at the end, how much of an impact did that make?
"Huge. I can't wait 'till they start showing up in full. The ones here today were awesome and loud. We gotta get more folks here following this group, because this is gonna be a special group, and it's going to be fun to watch them develop."
How much is playing close games like this good for building team culture?
"One thing we've challenged them; Been doin' this for a while, there are some years where you know your team needs a loss, for it to sink in. Because one other thing that can happen is you get a false sense of security. So we've been challenging them that 'we are not gonna let you guys learn that lesson from loses.' Because we believe in them and think that the potential is there."
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Ben Pahl is a sportswriter and broadcaster based in Portland, Oregon. His work covering college and professional sports has been featured by the Orange Media Network at Oregon State University as well as KBVR.fm. His other career stops in sports include the Portland Pickles baseball club and the NBA G-League's Rip City Remix.