By Jeff Faraudo
West Coast Conference columnist
It’s now official: There will not be a team that goes undefeated in league play among West Coast Conference women’s basketball programs this season.
That became reality after Oregon State’s 55-51 defeat at LMU on Thursday night, the Beavers’ first setback after opening conference play with five victories.
The fact is, this is normal. Since the 2011-12 season, only one team — Gonzaga two seasons ago — has forged a perfect conference record. The race this year appears to be more open than usual, with five teams currently within one game at the top of the standings.
OSU and Gonzaga are tied for first at 5-1, although that will be untangled next Thursday when the teams meet in Corvallis. Santa Clara, which owns a win over the Zags, is a half-game back at 5-2. And here come LMU and Portland, both 4-2 and winners of three of their past four games.
OSU coach Scott Rueck knew this wasn’t going to be easy. He talked earlier in the week about the path ahead for the Beavers, who had won seven in a row and took a 13-5 overall record to LMU.
“We’re at like 50 percent of what we can be,” he said. “That’s how it feels. We have so much room to grow and each individual has so much room to grow in their game. It’s just trying to push the right button at the right time to move them forward.”
LMU got the best of Rueck’s squad on Thursday but losses are part of the landscape and the veteran of 30 seasons as a head coach — 15 at OSU after 15 at George Fox University — understands the road to success is not always a straight line. The Beavers are back at it Saturday with a 2 p.m. tipoff at Pepperdine (11-7, 2-4), which looks dangerous after an 18-point win over Pacific.
It was at George Fox — a Division III program in Newberg, Oregon — that Rueck found the mantra “anything’s possible” during the 2008-09 season, when certainly anything did not seem possible, or at least likely. His team that season, powered by 10 freshmen, went 32-0 and won the DIII national championship.
The Beavers last season certainly were no sure thing to advance to the NCAA Tournament after losing eight conference games and finishing in fourth place, five games back of regular-season co-champs Gonzaga and Portland. But they swept three games at the Credit Union 1 West Coast Conference Basketball Championship in Las Vegas to earn their ninth NCAA bid in a span of 12 seasons.
The West Coast Conference coaches picked OSU as the favorite in their preseason poll this season, giving the Beavers nine of 12 first-place votes. It seemed entirely reasonable considering they returned a veteran squad, including senior guard Catarina Ferreira, the Most Outstanding Player of the 2025 conference championship after averaging 18.0 points, 9.3 rebounds and shooting 70 percent from the 3-point arc in three victories.
Then, just as practice began this fall, Ferreira suffered a season-ending knee injury. The Beavers wouldn’t easily overcome the loss, but the arrival of Washington State transfer Jenna Villa offered a potential solution.
At media day in October, just days after Ferreira’s injury, Rueck said Villa was a good fit for the Beavers’ style of play. “Now it’s kind of that perfect person at the perfect time under these circumstances,” he said at the time.
Villa plays basically the same position as Ferreira, both tall guards who often are positioned in the post on offense and generally are assigned to defend a frontcourt player.
The Beavers certainly miss Ferreira, but Villa and returnees Kennedie Shuler and Tiara Bolden have developed into a potent threesome. Villa leads the team with a 15.5 scoring average, including 19.1 points over the past eight games. She also contributes 4.6 rebounds, shoots 91 percent from the free-throw line and scored a career-high 32 points against Pacific on Jan. 2.
Shuler, a junior point guard with a soccer background, is the team’s defensive leader, evident after she had seven steals in a win over Seattle U last week. She averages 10.6 points, 5.2 rebounds, 5.5 assists and 1.7 steals. Bolden, a senior guard who arrived a year ago as a transfer from La Salle, has scored 23 points or more five times this season and averages 13.8 to go with 5.0 rebounds.
Rueck had seen Villa play dating back to her freshman year in high school, but the Beavers didn’t seriously recruit her out of Arlington, Wash., because they were well stocked at her position.
When she entered the transfer portal after last season, Rueck and his staff immediately identified her as a player they needed. The feeling was mutual, said Villa, who made OSU her only recruiting visit last spring.
Leaving WSU after two seasons wasn’t easy, Villa said. “I had this feeling I could be doing something better for myself as a person and a player,” she explained. “I just had a feeling after my conversation with Scott that I was going to love it. I came on my visit and it was just amazing.”
And now? “Oh my gosh, I’m having so much fun,” she said. “Playing with people that make basketball so much fun and people that believe in you and you believe in them — everybody just wants the best for each other. Playing with family, it’s so fun.”
Rueck is equally happy about Villa’s arrival. “Better and better every day,” he said, when asked to evaluate her fit with the team and her play. “Her versatility and skill set continues to develop within our system. You just see her having ownership over her understanding of everything we’re doing. She’s a traditional power forward for us, but she could probably play all five positions.”
The moving parts within the roster don’t end with Villa. The Beavers also had to replace Kelsey Rees, a 6-foot-5 all-conference center who gave them 12.9 points and 7.7 rebounds a year ago. They have filled the void with a tag-team duo at the position.
Senior Lizzy Williamson, a 6-5 native of Adelaide, Australia, and transfer from North Carolina State, averages 5.1 points and 4.3 rebounds. Néné Sow, a 6-8 native of Brussels, Belgium, and transfer from Utah, is producing 4.4 points, 6.2 rebounds and leads the team with 22 blocked shots. Between the two, that’s 9.5 points and 10.5 rebounds.
Even with the Beavers’ loss at LMU, they have three road victories on their ledger. They were tested by a challenging non-conference schedule that featured games against Illinois, Vanderbilt, Virginia Tech and rival Oregon. OSU is 84 in Saturday’s NET rankings. Rueck sees good things ahead.
“It’s a competitive group, they have a strong will to win,” he said. “I’m a coach, so I see all the room for growth that we need. We still have so far to go. I’m encouraged by that. It’ a hungry group that wants to get better. It’s just fun to help them figure it out every day.”
Villa considers what the Beavers achieved a year ago before she arrived on campus, and sees the potential to take a similar path this season.
“I think we can do exactly that and more, win the West Coast Conference championship and go to the NCAA Tournament and make it who knows how far,” she said. “The way we’re clicking right now is just a sniff of what we’re capable of. I really think we can do whatever we put our minds to.”