When it was ‘Miller Time’

Oregon State basketball’s glory years, under the late, great – and chain-smoking – Ralph Miller

These are heady times for Oregon State fans. The Beavers, picked in preseason to finish last in the Pac-12, won their first-ever conference tournament on Saturday night, thereby earning a rare appearance in the NCAA Tournament this week against Tennessee.

Forgive them if they’re acting like they haven’t been there before. They actually have. It’s just been awhile since OSU has been relevant. I’m dating myself here, but I remember a time when an Oregon State team in the NCAA Tournament was a familiar rite of spring. Unless you followed the old Pac-10 in the late 1970s and 1980s, it’s almost hard to imagine today the school from Corvallis was a national power. But it was real.

Coached by the masterful Ralph Miller, “The Orange Express,” as they were called then, rolled through the Pac-10 for a chunk of the 1980s virtually unchecked. And that included dominating UCLA, which wasn’t that far removed from the dynasty teams in the 1970s under legendary coach John Wooden.

OSU won the conference title easily four of five seasons between 1980 and 1984, never losing more than three league games. The Beavers went to the postseason 10 of the last 11 seasons under Miller. The 1981-82 team went all the way to the NCAA Elite Eight before falling to Patrick Ewing and the Georgetown Hoyas.

The 1980-81 team, which finished 17-1 in the Pac-10 and 26-2 overall, was particularly menacing, and one of the better college basketball teams I’ve ever seen. The Beavers were ranked No. 1 in the nation eight weeks that season, defeated UCLA twice, mauled rival Oregon three times by a combined 54 points and beat St. John’s in New York City.

The Beavers didn’t just beat teams. They destroyed them.

I witnessed one of those beatdowns on a rainy February evening in Corvallis in ’81 as a fledgling sportswriter for The News-Review in Roseburg, Oregon. I didn’t cover a lot of Beaver games in those days. After all, it was more than a two-hour drive to Corvallis. But this one caught my attention. The opponent was Washington, a school I had followed closely growing up in the Skagit Valley. Adding further interest to the game was Marv Harshman’s Huskies, that hated team from the north, had taken the unbeaten and No. 1-ranked Beavers to overtime in Seattle one month earlier, before succumbing 97-91.

It was my first visit to venerable Gill Coliseum, and one I will never forget. It seemed every one of the 10,059 fans in the building that night were on their feet when the mighty Beavers confidently took the floor as the pep band, swaying back and forth, blared the school’s fight song, “Hail to Old OSU.” I still get goosebumps just thinking about it.

The details are a little hazy 40 years later, but I recall the Beavers jumped on UW early with a smothering defense. Steve Johnson, OSU’s 6-10 All-American center, also had a monster game backing down UW’s Kenny Lyles and Dan Caldwell for easy buckets. Johnson would set an NCAA record that season for field-goal percentage (.746% that stood until 2017)

I’m sure there were a lot of “Holy jumpin’ up and down Martha” exclamations on the radio that night, OSU play-by-play man Darrell Aune’s signature call when the Beavs did something great. The Beavers dismantled the Huskies that night, 89-63. And it wasn’t even that close.

After the game, in a scene that in retrospect seems unfathomable, the nattily-dressed Miller sat cross-legged in a chair and fielded questions while puffing on a tiparillo cigar. You would never see a coach today smoking during a press conference. But Miller was a well-known chain smoker, who puffed often during practice, in his office, and on the team bus. His smoking habit would catch up with him at the end. He passed away in 2001 at the age of 82 from congestive heart failure and complications from emphysema.

Believe me, I’m not blowing smoke when I tell you the 1980-81 team would blow away the current Beaver outfit that’s headed for the Big Dance. They sliced and diced opponents with precision passing, an art that was perfected in practice when Miller insisted the team use a deflated basketball that couldn’t be bounced. Miller never would have tolerated today’s game of one-on-one dribbling.

The Beavers had all the pieces for a Final Four run. While Johnson hailed from San Bernardino, California, most of the talented nucleus was home-grown: Sharp-shooting, all-Pac-10 guards Mark Radford (Grant High of Portland) and Ray Blume (Parkrose of Portland) and forwards Rob Holbrook (Parkrose), Jeff Stoutt (Lake Oswego) and Charlie Sitton, a promising freshman out of McMinnville. Reserve guard Lester Conner, out of Oakland, California, was a premier defender, and would become an All-American the following season.

The season, however, would end with a thud in the second round of the NCAA Tournament. The Beavers were upset by No. 8 seed Kansas State on a last-second shot by future NBA star Rolando Blackman. The buzzer-beating basket would be immortalized the following week on the cover of Sports Illustrated.

The Beavers would go on to have many more successful seasons under Miller. He would recruit and coach many more great players, including A.C. Green, another local product out of Benson Tech in Portland who would later play many seasons in the NBA. And of course, perhaps his greatest player, future Seattle SuperSonic legend Gary Payton.

Once Miller retired in 1989, handing over the reins to longtime assistant Jimmy Anderson, the Beavers never came close to the success they enjoyed under the crusty old coach from Chanute, Kansas. Miller definitely left his mark. He was a two-time national coach of the year (1981 and 1982), and in 1988, just before his final season, was elected into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame. The Beavers play today on what is known as “Ralph Miller Court.”

While Miller wouldn’t always approve of the shot selection these modern-day Beavers are taking, I’m sure he’s proud of the job current coach Wayne Tinkle has done.

Looking down on all this, he’s probably smiling – and, of course, smoking.

Ralph Miller’s record in his 19 seasons at Oregon State

Season	W-L (Conf.)	Place	W-L (Overall)	Postseason
1970-71	4-10	6th	12-14
1971-72	9-5	3rd	18-10
1972-73	6-8	5th	15-11
1973-74	6-8	5th	13-13
1974-75	10-4	2nd	19-12	NCAA, 2nd round
1975-76	10-4	2nd	18-9*
1976-77	8-6	3rd	16-13
1977-78	9-5	2nd	16-11
1978-79	11-7	3rd	18-10	NIT, 1st round
1979-80	16-2	1st	26-4	NCAA, 2nd round
1980-81	17-1	1st	26-2	NCAA, 2nd round
1981-82	16-2	1st	25-5	NCAA, Elite Eight
1982-83	12-6	3rd	20-11	NIT, quarterfinals
1983-84	15-3	1st	22-7	NCAA, 1st round
1984-85	12-6	2nd	22-9	NCAA, 1st round
1985-86	8-10	5th	12-15
1986-87	10-8	3rd	19-11	NIT, 2nd round
1987-88	12-6	2nd	20-11	NCAA, 1st round
1988-89	13-5	3rd	22-8	NCAA, 1st round
Total	205-114		342-198