The man behind the color commentary

If you've watched a Beaver basketball game on television, you'd probably recognize his voice.

If you watched the quadruple-overtime affair against Stanford earlier this year, he was the guy who spent 20 minutes complaining on air how the game needed to end so he could use the restroom.

He's the one who sounds so insightful, it seems like he could coach the team in orange and black.

That's because he probably could.

Lamar Hurd started 94 games as a point guard at Oregon State in the mid-2000's, and his career path has led him back to Gill Coliseum.

He works for ROOT Sports, a job he's had for four years. He's primarily known for providing color commentary when ROOT broadcasts OSU games.

Hurd and OSU basketball go hand in hand, but the 6-foot-4 Houston native almost never came to Corvallis.

In fact, in a twist of irony, he wouldn't have had Craig Robinson gotten his way.

Robinson, an assistant at Northwestern University when Hurd was in high school, was the first coach from a major Division I program to recruit Hurd.

"I saw Lamar play for a small Christian school down in Houston and I absolutely loved him," Robinson said. "It was before people knew who Lamar Hurd was."

Robinson got Hurd to visit the campus in Chicago, and Hurd came "as close as you can get," Robinson says, to committing to the Wildcats.

It was still early in the process, though, and Hurd wanted to let things play out. Baylor University, which is located less than 200 miles from Houston, offered Hurd a scholarship after he hit a growth spurt his senior year.

Hurd committed to Baylor at the end of his senior season, but backed out of his commitment after the assistant who recruited him left the program.

Hurd called Robinson to tell him he wanted to become a Wildcat, but Robinson told Hurd that they'd given his scholarship to someone else.

"He told me they'd do what they could to get something open," Hurd recalls.

In the meantime, Hurd's interest in OSU grew.

The morning Hurd was scheduled to visit OSU — "literally five minutes before I was going to leave for the airport," he says — he got a call from Robinson. A spot at Northwestern had opened up.

Hurd's mom told him to take the visit to OSU anyway. Hurd did, loved it and decided to become a Beaver.

"I had to call Coach Robinson to tell him that I wasn't coming, and to this day I'm grateful for how respectful he was about that," Hurd said. "He didn't lash out on me like some coaches do to some kids."

After graduating from Oregon State in 2006, Hurd played a couple of professional seasons overseas in Germany.

He reconnected with OSU in 2008, when Athletic Director Bob De Carolis asked Hurd and former Beaver great A.C. Green to help search for former head coach Jay John's replacement.

The fact that De Carolis chose Hurd was a testament to Hurd's character and intellect — two things he was known for in his playing days.

"We chose Lamar and A.C. Green for some of the same reasons," De Carolis says. "Both were strong representatives of OSU, both knowledgeable in the sport, we trusted both to keep confidentiality while providing insightful advice during the process."

So who did Hurd and the search committee end up interviewing?

None other than the man who had tried to recruit Hurd to his school years prior — a man Hurd had not spoken to since the day he told him he was going to sign with OSU.

"It was kind of surreal," Hurd said of the 2008 phone interview with Robinson. "When I got on the phone with him, I flashbacked to the last phone call I had with him."

After the lengthy process, Hurd returned to coaching youth basketball in Portland and contemplated what to do next. He didn't want to go back overseas — he loved coaching kids too much.