Pass Masters of the Game

By B.J. Phillips

Oregon State's sharpshooting Beavers are busy, busy, busy

They are one of the oddest groups ever assembled as a basketball team. The center's family forbade him to play in high school, so he ran away from home for his senior year and came to college with only one season of experience. The two guards played lots of basketball in high school, but none of it as guards. One forward transferred from another school that had folded its basketball team right under his sneakers. The other forward was courted by recruiters from 250 colleges, then decided to journey no farther than to the college in the valley below his family farm. Presiding over the bunch is a 61-year-old coach who has seen so many gimmicks in his 30-year career that he limits his team to two basic offensive plays. Together they form the Oregon State University Beavers, unbeaten in their first 21 games and, according to one major wire service poll,* the finest college basketball team in the nation.

In the verdant, rain-gentled Willamette Valley, they are revered as the team that last season broke hated U.C.L.A.'s 13-year streak as champion of the Pacific-10 Conference. To teams around the country, the Beavers are known and feared for their busy, busy, busy combination of pressure defense and fast-passing offense. Under Coach Ralph Miller, who has produced 507 victories (third highest among active coaches) at Wichita State, the University of Iowa and, since 1971, Oregon State, the Beavers have revived the too often neglected art of passing. On the floor, Oregon State works like a tightly wound clock. Each player is a whirring cog as he passes to a teammate, runs toward the basket along intricate routes, then repeats the process until, finally, the defense falters and a man breaks open for an easy shot.

Center Steve Johnson, 6 ft. 10 1/2 in., 235 lbs., is a giant dervish, spinning loose for layups or whirling to loft a hook shot. The Beavers' offense is geared to pry him free within 6 ft. of the basket. Johnson completed 71% of his field goals last year, the highest single-season average in college history. He is shooting 76% this year, pushing his career average up to 67.5%. If Johnson can maintain the pace for the rest of the season, he will pass Bill Walton (who shot 65.1 % in his three years at U.C.L.A.) as the most efficient college scorer ever. The entire team benefits from Miller's tightly controlled play: Oregon State's 57.5% field-goal clip this year is the highest in N.C.A.A. history. Says Guard Ray Blume:"Coach Miller's theory is that if you pass the ball once and get a man open at 15 ft., then pass it two more times and you'll have a man open at 6 ft. We make those two extra passes."

The concept, Miller insists, is simple:basic basketball. Yet in an era of slam-dunk superstars, his beaver-like discipline is not exactly fashionable. Miller maintains that the passing game requires a player to reverse the order in which he learned to play: "The first thing a kid does when you hand him a basketball is bounce it on the floor. After a while, he starts to throw it at a basket. Last and least, he passes it to another kid. Our thinking is the other way around." Says Forward Lester Conner: "With Ralph, if you get fancy and dribble the ball, you sit."

To put his philosophy into practice, Miller seeks out largely overlooked talent willing to conform to the Oregon State system. Only Freshman Charlie Sitton, a smooth-shooting forward from nearby McMinnville, was a highly prized prep star. Guard Mark Radford, who combines with Blume to turn on the toughest full-court press in college basketball today, was a solid but unspectacular high school player.

Miller's biggest find is Johnson, the son of strict Seventh-day Adventists who, because their religion forbids secular activity from Friday night to Saturday night, did not let him play varsity basketball. He finally ran away from home just before his last year of high school and had himself declared a ward of the court. He lived alone in a rat-infested house until a high school teammate's parents assumed guardianship. Says Johnson: "I must have been crazy. I didn't have a penny in my pocket when I left home, but I wanted to play basketball so badly. I lived in this abandoned house in a bad part of town. I never knew how many rooms the place had because I was afraid to go into the back part. I just used one bedroom, and then I slept with the light on."

With that kind of self-sacrifice as a standard, the Beavers find that giving the ball to a teammate to shoot comes easily. As Playmaker Radford puts it, "We're prouder of the pass than we are of the basket. It's that simple, and it has worked." Indeed it has.

--By B.J. Phillips

*United Press International coaches' poll. Oregon State has been ranked second in the Associated Press sportswriters' poll, after the University of Virginia.

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