Better Starts the Theme for Oklahoma State as They Remember the Ten
STILLWATER – Oklahoma State basketball has a crossroads rapidly approaching. You can understand if the team came back from a long trip to Utah, two losses 83-62 to Utah and then on Tuesday 85-69 to BYU. The Cowboys need to get back on the winning side of the ledger and they will try to do it in the most emotional and meaningful game in any and every Oklahoma State season with Saturday’s Remember the Ten game. This one may be even magnified a little as with their return to the Big 12, it is Colorado the team Oklahoma State was playing when on the return home on Jan. 27, 2001 10 members of the travel part, players, managers, a broadcaster, a broadcast engineer, administrators, a trainer, and the pilots all perished in the crash on the Colorado flatirons.
Thursday several Oklahoma State players; Jamyron Keller, Connor Dow, and Marchelus Avery met with the media. Head coach Steve Lutz did as well. The message is clear. The education they received earlier from Oklahoma State Athletics veteran administrator and former athletics media relations specialist Mike Noteware had taken hold.
“I’ve been consumed the last 36 hours watching videos and reading stories, and after you have watched and read all those the gravity consumes you," Lutz said. “The tears in my eyes to watch Coach Sutton to address everybody in that memorial in Gallagher-Iba. I don’t know how he did it. I just know when it is all said and done, as the ambassador of this program I will never, never let their memory go away. We will always represent them to the highest degree and their memory will carry on forever. That is my promise to everyone at Oklahoma State, our alumni, and the families of the Ten.”
”We have a big game coming up Saturday, for more reasons than we are 1-3. Remember the Ten, we have those families coming back, so really big game and must win,” Keller said. “(We need to) stay the course.”
I think Keller and his teammates, head coach Steve Lutz all believe they need to better the course. A good start would be welcomed by everybody on Saturday at 2 p.m. when the Cowboys (9-7/1-4). At Utah on Saturday, Oklahoma State fell behind 12-0 at the start and eventually trailed by 26 points. Tuesday, BYU got out to a 22-11 lead and eventually led 42-15 before the Cowboys came back and got as close as three points. First-half shooting percentages have been in the mid 20’s.
“If you go back and look at our starts, if we miss shots then we don’t compete nearly enough on the defensive end. We have talked about different guys on this team playing through their offense,” Lutz explained. “Letting a missed layup or jump shot effect their play on the defense end. We’ve addressed it plenty and we need to get over it and get it fixed.
“In the beginning of games we’ve manafactured the shot we wanted,” Lutz continued emphatically. “We just missed the shot or in a couple of cases we just didn’t execute them. When we get the ball to the rim and miss layups or we get to the rim and pass it out. We’ve manafactured the shot we want and we need to make them.”
At that point, like in football when you finish with the scripted plays, you get into your offense. For Oklahoma State a motion offense that depends on teamwork, unselfish acts, and good passing.
“The games we’ve had where we had 15 or 16 assists the ball was moving and popping,” guard Jamyron Keller said of the offense. “We weren’t sticking to one area. I don’t think it messes with you, I think it just comes within the flow of the game.”
“The slow starts are scripted basketball, but when we don’t get scripted baskets our motion offense is stagnant” Lutz continued. “When people don’t switch on us and we don’t screen bodies and we’re not physical or tough enough to get our teammate open then we (don’t go to the right place). We’re being undisciplined and lazy.”
Better basketball, more determination, less selfish and more selfless acts. All good themes for a day that is about more than a team, more than a season, and about remembering 10 important people we loss way too soon and the loved ones and many friends they left behind.