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CBI Championship Series, Game 3: Oregon State excels in El Paso, takes home unlikely title with 18-18 record

First, Barack Obama was elected President of the United States. Then, his brother-in-law won a postseason championship in his first season as Oregon State's head basketball coach.
 
Okay, okay, the College Basketball Invitational isn't quite the NCAA Tournament, and not even as prestigious as the NIT. Nevertheless, there were 16 teams involved in the chase for CBI hardware, and after two clubs fought through a three-game title series and warred into the month of April, Craig Robinson and his Beavers were the only ones left standing. It's been a pretty good year to be an Obama and a Robinson, and this awesome achievement only adds to the feel-good ride in certain family circles. 
 
Yes, it's true: Oregon State is one of only four college basketball teams to end its 2009 season with a victory. Despite an 18-18 record, the Beavers can be called champions after they won Game 3 of the second annual CBI Championship Series. OSU's 81-73 victory over UTEP at the Don Haskins Center in El Paso enabled the Beavers to take the series, 2 games to 1. The Miners put up a good fight, but they'll have to settle for a runner-up finish and a 23-14 record.

It's been said throughout this series that Oregon State needed to play UTEP in the low 60s or high 50s, but after ringing up 81 points on Tony Barbee's boys in the final game of a very long season, the Beavers showed that they could win in more ways than one. Robinson told reporters after the game that, "For us, 19 3-pointers is too many, but when you make 12, it's not too many." That sums up OSU's ability to play an unfamiliar kind of style, yet still prevail.
 
How, then, did the kids from Corvallis corral this CBI crown? Three-point shooting made the overall difference, of course; a 12-of-19 night beyond the arc would make many teams nearly impossible to beat. To look a little deeper, however, consider the story of Beaver guard Ricky Claitt.
 
Claitt put together a performance in West Texas that was awfully reminiscent of Memphis shooting guard Roburt Sallie in the first round of this year's NCAA Tournament. Sallie, a reserve buried deep on the Tigers' bench, was thrown into action against Cal-State Northridge back on March 19 in Kansas City. Averaging only 5 points per game coming into that contest, Sallie--out of nowhere--threw down 10-of-15 threes on his way to 35 points. Any player who scores seven times as much as his normal average in a tournament game is the kind of player who makes a difference in a championship event, when scouting reports lead teams to key on other factors.

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It was little different for Claitt on this night against UTEP, whose coach--Barbee--ironically used to be a Calipari assistant at Memphis.
 
Claitt entered this encounter with a 7-point-per-game scoring average. What did the senior from Orlando, Fla., do? He merely hit 5-of-6 triples and 8-of-9 field goal attempts to post 28 points, four times his normal average, against the shell-shocked Miners. Claitt, more than anyone else, helped the Beavers shoot absurdly well beyond the arc and from the field. OSU ended this game with a glowing 57-percent accuracy rate, another stat that should almost always translate into victory. UTEP sharpshooter Stefon Jackson went an impressive 10-of-18 from the floor, and Miner forward Arnett Moultrie went an even better 8-of-11 on the night, but with Oregon State raining down trifectas from start to finish, the club from Conference USA couldn't keep up with the pack, or--one should say--the eighth-place team in the Pac-10 Conference, which just joined Old Dominion (CIT champion), Penn State (NIT champion), and Monday night's eventual winner of the Final Four as one of four teams to end this season in triumph.
 
It's been a remarkable year for Craig Robinson, on and off the basketball court. If 2010 offers a season that's even remotely comparable to this one in terms of improvement, late-season excellence, and teamwide determination, a better Beaver ballclub should make a lot of noise in the Pacific Northwest and beyond.

By Matt Zemek
DFN Sports Staff Writer