First stop: Goss Stadium

Jorge Reyes stopped just short of saying it was funny the Oregon State University baseball team lost six of its last seven regular season games."We entered the 2007 postseason in a similar funk, and look what happened to us?" Reyes said.

Reyes, now playing for the Double-A San Antonio Missions, was a freshman when the Beavers won their second of back-to-back national titles.

He's one of many Beaver greats to know what it takes to accomplish what this year's Oregon State team hopes to accomplish: a national championship.

Importance of chemistry

Head coach Pat Casey said he draws from the 2006 and 2007 experiences a little bit, but avoids making comparisons because each year's club is different.

But the area Casey most sees a similarity between past successful teams and this year's team, which begins its postseason run against Arkansas Little-Rock at 6:00 Friday night at Goss Stadium, is the club's mental makeup and mindset.

When asked what propelled the 2006 and 2007 Beaver teams to greatness, former Beaver catcher and current Double-A Midland firstman Mitch Canham pointed to the team's chemistry.

"Everyone meshed really well," Canham said. "It was a family atmosphere, everyone felt comfortable."

Chemistry has been a common theme this year, as Casey has noted time and time again that this year's team has bonded at a level teams in the recent past have not.

"We've had some teams with some great chemistry and this is one of them," Casey said. "We've also had a couple teams in recent years with a few more distractions."

It goes without saying that the team-oriented clubs have had most success, but Joey Wong - who won a national title as a freshman at OSU and missed the tournament all together as a sophomore - confirmed as much.

According to Wong, the 2007 team was incredibly team-oriented, despite having plenty of guys who could have been "I" guys, given their talent.

"I don't want to say the chemistry in 2008 was bad, but the chemistry in 2007 was unbelievable," Reyes added.

Wong wasn't as hesitant, saying the 2008 squad had "too many guys who were focused on themselves." He noted that they frequently had team meetings to address the issue, but for the most part it was to no avail.

Third baseman Carter Bell, in his third year at OSU, said he "definitely" sees a difference between this year's club and the past Beaver teams he's played on.

"We're a group of brothers. We have trust and belief in everybody and that's what you need when you're going for a championship," he said. "You can't have a weakest link and I don't think we have one."

Casey liked the team's chemistry in the fall, but didn't expect it to carry them as far as it has.

"We knew we had a bunch of guys that would scrap for you, but we didn't envision them taking off and becoming the No. 2 team in the country in the middle of May," Casey said.

Getting the confidence back

Much like this year's team, the 2007 Beaver squad entered the postseason amidst a downward spiral.

It lost five of its final seven regular season games, and three of its four final regular season series.

For a team that started the year 23-3, the fresh start that the postseason provided was all it needed to regain its mojo.

Wong said that once the Beavers found out they had made the tournament, everything else was forgotten.

Reyes said the turning point came in the locker room following the Beavers 13-inning loss to the University of Virginia, in which Casey, sensing his players' frustration, told the team that "it wasn't over until somebody personally took the jerseys off of our backs and forced us not to play."

An eighth-inning Chris Hopkins' home run in an elimination game against the Cavaliers the next day, Canham said, was the point at which "the ball got rolling and we became unstoppable."

The Beavers went undefeated the rest of the way.

This year's team will likely look back on a similar defining moment, should they catch fire.

Canham said it doesn't matter that this year's team is young and relatively inexperienced in comparison to the teams he starred on.

"All it takes is one guy - whether he plays or not, whether he's experienced or not - to step up and say 'we've got this,'" Canham said.

Perhaps that moment already came: Bell held an exclusive, motivational players-only meeting Wednesday. Or perhaps it'll be an in-game experience that gets the club rolling.

Championship expectations

Even though they're busy grinding their way through the minor leagues, Canham, Wong and Reyes find time to keep tabs on Beaver baseball.

Reyes, who is currently teammates with former Beavers Eddie Kunz and Daniel Robertson, says a deep postseason run would give the Beaver clan some desired bragging rights.

"We have a teammate who played at Vanderbilt, and he's always giving us crap about how much better the SEC is than the Pac-10," Reyes said.

Wong has a teammate on the single-A Ashville Tourists who played at Georgia, and said the two have been bantering ever since it was revealed the Bulldogs were bound for Corvallis.