STILLWATER – The start of the 2020-21 season for Oklahoma State basketball has been a good one. They’ve started the season 5-0 and will be looking to move to 6-0 as they’ll face Wichita State on Dec. 12 at 2:00 p.m. The Cowboys also got some short-term good news regarding the postseason ban they received back in June.
Junior point guard Isaac Likekele is one of the more experienced players on the team and the longest tenured Cowboy on the team, but this is a rather young team that’s still learning as it goes. Something this team is going to have to learn fast is a hot start to a season doesn’t necessarily mean it’s going to translate over to Big 12 play.
If you remember back to last season, the Cowboys started the season out 7-0 and then lost 11 out of the next 14 games after Likeleke missed a little more than a month of games due to an illness.
“I feel like a lot of things in some ways, even though we don’t discuss it, but you can see with the coaches and the way they coach, they know how early success could be detrimental to the team because we went through it last year,” said Isaac Likekele on learning from the start of last season. “You can’t ask the freshmen guys that’s had a lot of success in high school, you can’t expect them to understand. Some things you’ve got to go through and learn by experience, which I did, I learned by experience. So, all I can try to do is implement how important it is that we focus and keep going hard and not get caught up in early success because it can catch up with you. Any second you can be that team going downhill and be the bottom team in the country and any second you can be the hottest team in the country. You just want to be consistent every day, that’s what it’s about.”
Something that’s going to help the younger guys once they get into conference play, even though the level of competition is much higher, are the close games the Pokes have played to start the season. The gamed against Oakland and ORU were tight well into the second half, even though it was believed the Pokes should run away with the wins.
Isaac Likekele said the other night that he was proud of the freshmen because they weren’t happy with the way the team played and beat both Oakland and ORU.
“It just lets them know that you can’t take anybody for granted,” said Likekele of the tough wins over Oakland and ORU. “There’s talented players everywhere; everyone that’s playing D1 basketball is talented. There’s guys that they know personally that’s not at a D1 level that they know can play at a D1 level, so you can never take any team for granted. Also, people are putting, especially from high school to college, you realize college coaches are putting together schemes and all types of strategies to go against certain players, it’s just something you didn’t have in high school. High school coaches didn’t spend hours and hours and hours on film trying to strategize for the next game the way they do at this level. So, I feel as if [the freshmen] didn’t understand that part, but one thing they did understand is they’ve got to go out there and play and find the will to win. That’s what I’m more proud of them of, finding ways to win late, which is a good lesson to learn right now instead of blowing every team out by 20 or 30.”
The Cowboys start conference play next Wednesday, Dec. 16 at home in Stillwater against TCU, a team that’s started the season 4-2. But the Pokes will have to get through Wichita State this coming Saturday unscathed and I’m certain they won’t be overlooking the Shockers.
