I was an Oregon State basketball season ticket holder for years two, three and four of the Jay John era.

And once upon a time I really believed John might be the guy to lead the Beavers out of the wilderness that's more or less enveloped them since Gary Payton left.

He seemed thrilled to be at OSU, said all the right things about the legacy of Ralph Miller, was not Ritchie McKay - that in itself was a huge plus - and brought in some athletes capable of playing a somewhat free-flowing game.

Midway through year four, though, I lost faith, for two primary reasons:

• His dwelling on the season-ending groin injury of Lamar Hurd, a solid but offensively challenged point guard.

• His rambling style of talking, which I suspected was getting in the way of teaching his players and making them better.

There were other things, but mainly it boiled down to the excuses that followed Hurd's injury and the lack of plain speaking.

And thus did I resolve to stop attending games - unless free tickets happened to fall my way.

That's how, unlike about 98 percent of mid-valley residents, I happened to be in the stands for Sunday's 79-62 loss against Tennessee Tech.

The crowd was generously listed at 3,216. And you can't even blame the acres of empty seats on Beaver fans' interest in watching alumni Derek Anderson and Matt Moore lead their NFL teams to victory Sunday, because both of their games were over an hour before the 2 p.m. basketball kickoff.

Tech, now 4-7 on the season, won Sunday's game for two simple reasons: They played with more purpose and organization, and they shot better.

Of course, it's easier to post a high percentage when you're throwing down a montage of highlight-film dunks as the Golden Eagles did, but to that they added 7-of-15 shooting on 3-pointers and finished 25-of-52 from the floor.

OSU, meanwhile, missed 19 of its 23 shots from beyond the arc and was 21 of 59 overall. Compounding the problem was a 16-of-26 effort at the foul line.

I can't pretend to be the last word on Beaver basketball 2007-08 because all I've seen of them were Sunday's game plus a televised win over Portland a few weeks ago. But to me they basically look like a somewhat more athletic version of the same product John has rolled out since a one-game NIT appearance when Lucas was a senior.

Offensively, there's no real cohesion - summed up with brilliant absurdity against Tech by a pass sailing over the head of point guard Ricky Claitt as he bent over to tie his shoe - and defensively and on the glass, the Beavers just can't quite seal the deal consistently.

As for newcomer C.J. Giles, he got about as much court time as J. Geils (the Newport High band, subbing for the vacationing OSU ensemble, belted out a pleasing rendition of "Centerfold").

Effective on the backboards (eight rebounds) and as a shot-blocker (three), Giles at times looked gassed during his 16-minute outing and fouled out for the second time in his two games with the Beavers. So far he has 10 fouls and nine points in an OSU uniform.

All in all, it was a Beaver performance that even the cheerleaders would have had a hard time getting fired up over - that is, if they had been there.

Like the band, the rally squad had the day off. In its place was a troupe from Lakeridge High School that probably cheered before bigger, and a lot more lively, crowds last year when their school faced off with Lake Oswego star Kevin Love.

Sunday's turnout obviously included those who have already written this season off and are wondering what a different coach will do next year with a group of players who seem capable of being far more competitive than they were Sunday. Such talk for now is mainly just sound and fury, signifying nothing, to paraphrase that famous basketball fan William Shakespeare.

But what probably signifies something is that the silencing of the scorer's table buzzer, following a 15-second malfunction, generated greater applause than anything the Beavers did on the floor.

Associate editor Steve Lundeberg was the D-H sports editor from 1993 to 1999.