CORVALLIS — Three games down this season and Craig Robinson’s workload

hasn’t gotten any lighter.

Robinson has a good grasp of the areas he needs to focus on to get the Oregon State men’s basketball team playing up to his expectations.

First, Robinson is determined to find a way for the Beavers to get comfortable with the high expectations of their fans and the media. Those expectations have been as high as OSU landing an NCAA tournament berth.

“My job this season is to get them to calm down about feeling like they’re under pressure to be so good,” Robinson said. “That sounds like a weird thing to say, but for guys who have gone almost their entire careers without winning, that’s a big hurdle for us. So we’re trying to remain calm and keep doing what we do because what we found with last year and I think what the team believes in is when we put the work in, they get positive results and they certainly have put the work in.”

The team has already felt the pressure. Robinson said the Beavers struggled in their season-opening loss to Texas A&M Corpus Christi largely because they had put too much pressure on themselves.

The Beavers simply did not know how to handle the high expectations.

“They’re the ones who really have to understand that with all the expectations that are on our shoulders, you can’t do it all in one game or two games,” Robinson said. “It’s a season-long, hard journey. Harder than our journey was last year.

“They’ve got the first game out of their system. They know the expectations are going to be there and they know their level of play has to be there. Now we’ll see if we can keep it going.”

There is reason for optimism. The Beavers lost Rickey Claitt, but return leading scorer Calvin Haynes along with starting point-center Roeland Schaftenaar and defensive stalwart Seth Tarver.

Also back are forwards Omari Johnson and Daniel Deane, guards Josh Tarver and Lathen Wallace and center Calvin Hampton.

Add freshmen Joe Burton, Jared Cunningham and Angus Brandt to the mix, along with Rhys Murphy, who is currently out with an injury, and possibly Roberto Nelson, who is waiting on clearance from the NCAA, and the Beavers have a roster that matches the depth of any top program.

Robinson’s job is to sort it out. That

doesn’t mean picking a starting five.

Robinson is in the process of putting together his rotation for the season. The Beavers play a brand of basketball that requires a player to go all-out at all times. Robinson is looking for the players who are best able to sustain that level of play without a drop-off because of fatigue.

Robinson said he will probably go with nine players in the rotation.

“I will say it feels like nine is the right rotation for what we’re trying to do,” Robinson said. “If we want to play hard on defense and pick people up from time to time, you need nine guys and I would say that we’ve got 12 or 13 that we feel comfortable putting in the game.”

A deep roster makes the job all the easier for Robinson. He won’t get bogged down with boiling down the lineup.

“Never have I run into a situation yet where I’ve got too many guys and I can’t find time for them,” he said. “Once we get comfortable in our skin, we’ll be able to just send waves of guys in if we wanted to. We’ll have personnel for all different situations.”