CORVALLIS - Oregon State women's basketball coach LaVonda Wagner said she believes the jet is revving its engines at the end of the runway.

Now, it's time for the Beavers to take off.

"We're at the point in this program where it's high alert," Wagner said last week in describing the state of the Beavers, who finished 4-14 in the Pacific-10 Conference for the second year in a row, and 12-18 overall, in Wagner's third season.

"Everything in this program is in order, except we have to be able to compete better and come up on the 'W' side of the ledger, for my sanity more than anyone's because I've never been in this position before," either as a player at Mars Hill College or as an assistant at East Tennessee, Illinois and Duke.

"But I think we're ready to go, with the people we have coming back and the people we're adding. Those people who want to come with us, the door is open. If they don't want to come, we've got to move on. The ship has to go."

The Beavers are 37-52 overall and 15-39 in the Pac-10 in Wagner's three seasons. They won 16 games and advanced to the WNIT in 2006, slipped to nine wins in 2007 and improved to 12 this year and probably would have had more had junior guard Brittney Davis not missed eight conference games with a sprained right knee.

"Everybody has injuries; you don't complain, you don't make excuses," Wagner said. "You try to find a way to make things work, and we did that. By the end we were able to compete without our best Pac-10 scorer."

Nine of the Beavers' last 11 losses were by 11 points or less. Davis was averaging 15.8 points in conference play when she was hurt in a practice mishap in late January.

Wagner said one of the season's biggest positives was getting valuable experience for freshmen Talisa Rhea and Alex Mitchell, who started a combined 17 games.

"(They learned) to step up and learn how to compete at a higher level, so now they have an idea," Wagner said.

Rhea (10.3 ppg, 2.6 rpg) made 67 3-point baskets, just two off the school record, and set a school record with eight 3-pointers against Washington State. She was the second Beaver since 1994 to make the Pac-10's all-freshman team.

Mitchell began playing regularly in the second half of the season and averaged 4.8 points and 3.9 rebounds overall and 6.5 points and 5.2 rebounds in conference games, with a career-best 14 rebounds at Oregon.

Junior guard Mercedes Fox-Griffin was a third-team all-star and honorable-mention all-defensive team; senior guard Ashley Allen was honorable mention all-conference and led the Beavers in scoring (15.3 ppg).

"Ashley had experience, she understood what this conference was about," Wagner said.

Junior forward Tiffany Ducker rounded into form after a year off, and sophomore forward Stacey Nichols and sophomore guard Julie Futch played significant minutes in every game they were healthy.

Sophomore forwards Whitney Champlin and Antoinette Reed and freshmen forwards Viki Wohlers and Brittany Eskridge played little.

"There are people who have to get better and stronger," Wagner said. "They have to have a desire to compete, they have to want to get better" to play a larger role in 2008-09.

OSU averaged 60.5 points per game, was outrebounded 34-32 per game and surrendered 337 offensive rebounds. All will be points of emphasis in 2008-09.

"We have to get better offensively," Wagner said. "We have to create our own shots, be in better condition and be able to guard people's interior game.

"My main focus and emphasis is rebounding. That jumps out at me and it bothers me because when I played that was my favorite part of the game.

"I've got to find a way to make us more competitive in rebounding. We're looking for a big, no question about it, but we have to find somebody who can complement us."

The Beavers have signed 5-7 guard Brittany Kennedy of Lewis & Clark High in Spokane and 6-1 guard/forward Kirsten Tilleman of Bozeman, Mont. They will both play next season. Miami (Fla.) transfer Eboni Sadler, a

5-11 guard, will redshirt next season and be eligible in 2009-10.

"Kennedy is a stopper and I need her to score off of her defense," Wagner said. "She's a winner, three state championships in a row, she took that (2008) team on her back to the state-championship game, and cut down the nets.

"She's a phenomenal leader, she wants to win and is a great teammate. You can't teach somebody to want to play defense and I'm excited about that."

Tilleman is a soccer, basketball and track standout who was the Montana Gatorade Player of the Year and MVP of the state tournament as a junior.

"She gives us some size and versatility at the 4," Wagner said. "She can find ways to score, she has a high basketball IQ, and is a winner. We got better with them signing."

Sadler will make OSU better as a practice player, much as Davis and Allen did in their redshirt seasons following their transfers from Minnesota and Oregon.

"Eboni is extremely athletic, can play the 1, 2, or 3 and she's going to challenge those people in practice every day like (Stanford's) Candace Wiggins can challenge them in games," Wagner said. "She will have a huge impact.

"She's a big guard with great athleticism, can get anywhere she wants off the dribble, knock down a shot, and she loves to rebound."

The Beavers haven't been to the NCAAs since 1996 and haven't finished above .500 in the Pac-10 since 2002. So, Wagner said it's time for the program to make a move.

"That's not to put pressure on my kids, that's just the way I feel," she said. "The expectations I put upon this program and myself coming in are very high and no one in this community or on this campus can be harder on me than I am on myself.

"I've been told to be patient and I'm trying to be patient. There was no system here when I took this over; I lost three recruiting classes," as only two players signed by predecessor Judy Spoelstra remain in the program less than three years after her departure.

"The fact we've done what we've done is phenomenal. But now I want to see some results on the scoreboard."