Men's Basketball Adds C.J. Giles

CORVALLIS, Ore. – C.J. Giles has transferred to Oregon State and is joining the men’s basketball program, head coach Jay John announced today.

Giles, a 6-foot-11, 240-pound center originally from Seattle, is transferring from Kansas. He began classes at OSU today (the first day of winter quarter). He is not on scholarship at this point and is considered a walk-on.

He may practice with the Beavers immediately and take part in all other team-related activities, but won’t be eligible to play until after Dec. 8, 2007, due to NCAA transfer regulations. He will have a little less than two full seasons of eligibility at OSU, including two complete Pacific-10 Conference seasons.

“We recruited C.J. when he was in high school so we feel like we know him very well,” John said. “He understands that he has been given a second chance and I am confident he will make the most of it. He wouldn’t be here if I didn’t believe that he will become a model student-athlete and a solid citizen for us. C.J. has made some mistakes in the past, but we researched this extensively and gave it a lot of thought. We have a very disciplined program, our players graduate and we have a good history with transfers. Although he will be held to a very high standard, C.J. has the opportunity to thrive here.”

Said Giles: “The main thing I want to do here at Oregon State is graduate, and the second thing I want to do is help change the program and get it winning like the old days. When I visited OSU, from the players to coaches to the students, it felt like home. They greeted me with open arms. I’m very thankful for this opportunity. I was young and immature at Kansas. Now I’m here and I’m going to grow up. People grow from their mistakes. I have learned to look at the big picture and I’m going to do all the little things to succeed. The things that got me into trouble in Lawrence, I’ve learned from that and I know what I need to change.”

Giles played two seasons at national powerhouse Kansas, which appeared in the NCAA Tournament both years. As a 2005-06 sophomore, he played in 33 games and started 13 while averaging 6.2 points, 4.8 rebounds and 1.5 blocked shots. He ranked seventh in the Big 12 in blocks. As a 2004-05 freshman, he appeared in 21 games and started five times while averaging 2.8 points and 2.4 rebounds. The Jayhawks won the Big 12 regular-season title both seasons and in 2006 they won the Big 12 tournament championship. Giles did not see any action for Kansas this season and was dismissed from the team in early November. He completed the fall semester before transferring.

During summer 2005, he was one of 21 players invited to the USA Basketball Under-21 National Team trials. He was injured during the first day of the trials and did not continue, however.

As a prep player, Giles was a heavily recruited prospect out of Rainier Beach High School in Seattle, where he was the 2004 Seattle Metro MVP and the runner-up for state player of the year honors. He was rated among the top 80 players nationally by Hoop Scoop and rivals.com. He was a high school teammate of USC’s Lodrick Stewart and Kansas’ Rodrick Stewart.

A similar transfer situation took place back in January 2004, when Nick DeWitz moved from Iowa to Oregon State during the middle of the school year. After sitting out a year, DeWitz became a very productive player. He averaged 12.7 points in 54 career games and ended as OSU’s all-time leader in three-point field-goal percentage (43.6%) and blocked shots per game (2.06).

The first three transfers that Jay John brought in have all graduated (DeWitz, Jason Fontenet and Jim Hanchett). A fourth, junior guard Wesley Washington, is on track to graduate.

The Beavers go on the road this weekend to face Arizona on Thursday (Jan. 11) and Arizona State on Saturday (Jan. 13).

QUOTES FROM MONDAY, JAN. 8 PRESS CONFERENCE

OSU COACH JAY JOHN (opening statement) “I’m thrilled that C.J. Giles is joining our basketball program at Oregon State University. We developed a relationship maybe a little more than four years ago when he was entering his junior year in high school. My assistant coach Brian Loyd did a wonderful job of establishing a relationship with C.J., his family and his high school coaches. As the recruiting process evolved I had the chance to get to know C.J. and I found him to be humble and engaging and a motivated young man. I thoroughly enjoyed him and believed in him as a person. When C.J. left Kansas he talked to his high school coaches and told them that he wanted to transfer someplace closer to home and wanted to go someplace where he had a comfortable relationship with the coaching staff. There were a number of schools in his mind but he asked his coaches to call Oregon State University and see what interest we might have. Obviously we were interested as we are here today. When I first talked to C.J. he said he really wanted to have a second chance to do things the right way. I asked him if he wanted to graduate from college and he said yes, he wanted to graduate from college. So it kind of moved on from there. C.J. recognizes and admits that he’s made some mistakes. This wasn’t just a snap decision on our part. For the past five weeks we spent some time trying to learn what we could learn to ensure, as we would with any recruit, that if we had someone join our program that they stand for the right things and would have the opportunity to be successful. I sincerely believe that C.J. wants to learn from his mistakes and do things the right way. I believe he’s expressed that he wants to be a model student-athlete at Oregon State University. I do believe that he values this opportunity. We run a structured and disciplined program and our track record in graduating our players has been very good. And that would include transfers, like C.J. As I said again, we don’t want to bring people into the program that don’t have a chance to be successful on the basketball court as well as in the classroom. As I said in the beginning, I’m very thrilled that C.J. has joined us.”

C.J. GILES (opening statement) “I’m thrilled to be here. I’d like to thank the university as well as all the other schools that were recruiting me that were willing to give me a second chance. I admitted to my mistakes and I will learn from it and mature from it. I’m here to start fresh and new.”

GILES (on returning home to the Northwest) “It’s not home, but it’s close enough to home. One thing I really wanted was my family there to support me. My mother, my grandma, my little brother who is playing ball in California, he can easily make it up here.”

GILES (on how he can impact the program) “I think I can impact it. I’ve been watching a lot of Pac-10 ball. It’s totally different than the Big 12. I know I can come in and compete and help this program.”

GILES (on leaving Kansas) “It’s a lot of things. What happened when I was younger and all the bad mistakes I did, I felt like I needed to start fresh.”

GILES (on what kind of player he is) “I’m an energy type of guy. I’m one of those guys who will do anything, every little thing for us to win. If it comes to me grabbing 20 rebounds and scoring zero points I’m happy. I’m the type of guy who will do anything and everything.”

GILES (if this was his first day on campus) “I came on a visit. So this is my second time on campus. I started classes today. It was kind of hard because I finished school at Kansas back in Seattle so I was on my own schedule, working out and doing my classes. It’s hard but I’m getting back into the swing of things.”

GILES (on his relationship with Brian Loyd and the coaches) “They made me feel at home, that this would be my home away from home. I felt a relationship as soon as I came.”

GILES (on since coming out of high school, the path and how he’s grown) “I look at basketball totally different especially when I’ve been out of it these past couple of months. Knowing how much I miss it, knowing how much I can do to impact it. I just have to take it as a bump in the road and move on from it.”

GILES (on his decision) I felt like I needed to be close (to home) and this was the best choice for me for an academic standpoint and for basketball too.”

GILES (on OSU’s players and his choice to come here) “One thing I really believe is that without chemistry, the team really can’t be that good. That was one of the main things when I came in, the guys brought me into the team.”

JOHN (on if this is a boost coming off a bad weekend) “Obviously we can’t suit him up and take him down to Tucson. But I do think that from the standpoint of C.J.’s involvement in practice, he’s chomping at the bit to get out there. It’s definitely going to be a benefit to everybody and the competition level in practice. With half of our team being youngsters it will be good for them, and as things move forward, it’s definitely an upward swing.”

JOHN (on next year’s team and the talent) “We’ll see as we get all the new guys in. We made a splash in year three. It is a coaching staff that had accumulated the most wins over a four-year period since Gary Payton. We got to postseason play in year three for the first time since 1990. With that, we were able to recruit a better high school player than when we first got here. With C.J. and we were first recruiting him we wanted him to be a part of it. We had a shot there. And then on the summer circuit, sometimes people in Seattle don’t get seen as much because of the location, but once people saw him that summer, I told Brian Loyd we weren’t going to have much of a chance at him as he keeps going. Without any question what C.J. will bring, we’ve never really had a dominant rebounder and shot-blocker like this. It’s a next step forward in terms of having a big man that can control the game.”

GILES (on his approach at Oregon State and what he’ll do differently) “Coming in, I’m going to learn from my mistakes. I just know that my whole mindset has changed from when I was a freshman at Kansas. I’ve learned from my mistakes and I’m going to move forward.”

ADDITIONAL COMMENTS – OSU ASSISTANT COACH BRIAN LOYD

“The one thing I don’t want to do today is to be redundant. I can’t make it any more clear how much we want C.J. to be here, and that we’re happy that he is here. I’m very excited for him as well as our basketball program. As coach said earlier, my relationship with Rainier Beach High School goes back to my days at Portland State University. I got a chance to know Mike Bethea, the head coach there, Dan Jurdy, the athletic director, and other people in the administration. The one thing that I’ve learned is that Rainier Beach doesn’t just produce great players, but it also produces great people. Getting a chance to recruit C.J., you learn very quickly the kind of person that he is. He’s very well mannered. He’s got a huge heart. He’s conscientious of other people. He’s a hard worker. I have never met anybody who’s had anything bad to say about him as a person. In getting the phone call that I got from Coach Bethea, asking if we had any interest in C.J., immediately I was like oh yeah. But I had to think about. As times change sometimes people can change too. The number one thing I wanted to do was to make sure that we were able to get with C.J. and recreate the relationship we had with him and find out where he was as a person. There was no way that I was going to have Coach go after that situation unless I was sure he was the same person. Getting back with him, bringing him to campus, having a chance to be around him when he was home in Seattle, there was no doubt he was the same kid that we fell in love with when he was in high school. He’s funloving and the same guy. I’m happy that he gets an opportunity to show everybody the true person that C.J. Giles is over the next couple of years playing for us, and getting a degree here and being a citizen in the community of Corvallis. I think he’s going to prove that to everybody the true person that he is. I’m excited for him and I’m excited for our program.”

(on taking the call from Rainier Beach and getting the process going) “There’s a serious process there. We had an interest because we recruiting him in high school and he only got better after that. There was no doubt. We had to get a release from Kansas before we could do anything. Once that got taken care of, we were able to go Seattle and see them and talk about the prospects. We talked to C.J. about what his plans were. He said he wanted to go to school and get a degree. He said it was important to me. I could go to the pros and be an NBA player or go overseas, but I want to be in school. I want to be in school and graduate and play. That was exciting to hear.”

(on who he had to talk to at OSU) “He has met with some upper administration in the athletic department and he knows what is expected of him as a student-athlete.”

(on if he was surprised on what happened at Kansas) “I was a little surprised. But you can Google anybody and find all kinds of things. I wanted to go back and make sure that we could find out where he is at this time in his life. If nothing else, he has matured greatly. What he’s had to go through, going to Kansas as a kid out of high school, it’s rock star status. He’s admitted to that that he got caught up in it. But being an adult now, he understands the adult world and his responsibilities that he has to take care of. He’s kind of hard to learn the hard way. But that’s made him mature. And now where he’s at mentally, some times you have to go through some tough things to make you a better person, a wiser person, a smarter person, more responsible. That’s where he is now. The way he’s talking now is a lot different than I imagine what he did when he first got into college. He sees the big picture now.”

(on being closer to home and his high school coaches) “I know that’s a big deal for them. They were able to bring him down here and drop him off at school, which they could never do before. It’s a huge support system. If you go to Rainier Beach High School you see that they’re a big family. They really care for those kids. A lot of times they’re the only family that those kids have. For him to be closer to that support unit is huge. For them to be able to see him play, just make a four-hour drive, is big, and you can already feel the energy that it’s giving him as a person. With them being here the other day, and being here on campus, they see it’s going to be great, coming down to watch him play and Pac-10 basketball. I think they were blown away by the campus. So hopefully that will translate to some more kids from Rainier Beach coming down here because they’re getting a feel for the wonderful people at Oregon State and the Corvallis community.”