Riley helps Beavers overcome adversity to place third

Achieving success after a series of setbacks describes the goal each season, but the 2007 campaign was more difficult than most.

Oregon State football coach Mike Riley didn’t want to face that season without star receiver Sammie Stroughter, but that’s what he had to deal with, and much more.

Mix in the loss of leading offensive lineman Jeremy Perry to injury, inconsistent play from two young quarterbacks and a banged up tailback who missed two games — disaster should have struck.

The Beavers, however, still finished third in the Pacific-10 Conference and won the Emerald Bowl, the fourth postseason victory in five years with Riley.

Duplicating the success of the 2006 season while dealing with all those adversities is why the Gazette-Times sports staff voted Riley the Oregon State men’s sports coach of the year for the second straight year.

“I appreciate that, and it means a lot,” Riley said. “It means a lot when you are recognized by people from the outside of the organization. An honor like this is a beautiful thing to me because it’s a total reflection of the team, the coaching staff and all those who helped. We stress we are a close-knit, family-oriented team, and an award like this shows that we are doing that.”

Riley has slowly developed his program, and now has all his own recruits on the roster. There’s an understanding by players and support staff about what he wants and how it’s done.

He reached his goal of continuity in the program. A blue-collar work ethic has been established, and that helps his teams carry on through tough times.

“Mike is doing it the right way,” athletic director Bob De Carolis said. “He’s building it from the ground up. He’s instilling the right values we believe in. He has a family-based program, which is we are all in this together. He constantly talks, no matter about how the season is going, to get better. We have to start out of the gate faster, but that’s why we improve as the season goes on. We don’t give up after hitting a couple hurdles.”

Riley teams are known to finish strong. So as the problems with players kept popping up, the team played better.

“It’s a testament to the perseverance of our team and the never-say die-mentality,” Riley said. “I appreciate our players, despite these setbacks. I’d have sleepless nights because those kinds of things caused us problems. Our players never blinked. And our staff, we adapted. We didn’t have the deep threat guy, but we found ways to get big plays anyway.”

Riley used to have the tag of being a predictable pro style play caller, but he started running plays against the book last year in terms of timing.

This year he changed his offense midseason, adding the fly sweep. And it became the signature play of the offense.

“We recognized we didn’t have the same experienced receiving corp.,” Riley said. “Losing Sammie changed the effectiveness of throwing the ball down field. We studied the fly sweep. We run it a little bit — Ruben Jackson did it once last year. I thought it was a trick play, but it eventually became an inside outside punch.”

Once Riley stopped thinking the fly sweep was a gimmick but part of what the Beavers do, the coaches found better ways to block it and use the other options with fakes.

Players filled specialties to help the team throughout the lineup. Kicker Alexis Serna took on punting when the starter quit the team and walk-on Taylor Kavanaugh was trusted with the punt returns.

“He has the ability to develop kids over the long haul, not the short fix, so walk-ons and two-star guys find a niche by the time they are upperclassmen and they are contributors,” De Carolis said. “That’s an art to be able to do that.”

Looking back, there are several highlights to the season for Riley. The goal line stand at California that led to a major upset and the double overtime win at Autzen Stadium are great memories.

However, the overall work in the season is what he’ll cherish most.

“What I like the most is the day-to-day work,” Riley said. “I like the process. I like the grinding it out and getting better. That’s where we spend the majority of our life. If we don’t make the most of that, we are not going to have that game-winning run or goal line stand.”