STILLWATER – There’s no question as to whether or not Oklahoma State underperformed during the 2022-23 season. Certainly some high moments throughout the season, such as winning six-of-seven Big 12 games in a row, including a win over Ole Miss in the middle there. The Pokes also had a regular season sweep over Iowa State and a three-game sweep over Oklahoma.
However, certainly some lows which out-weight the bad as they lost to Southern Illinois at home, gave up multiple double digit leads and lost five of six games to finish the regular season, which all lead to them missing out on the NCAA tournament.
Whichever way you choose to look at the season, just know that Mike Boynton and Co. are looking to make some changes throughout the offseason.
“Obviously, there’s going to be a lot of fluidity, just honestly in the roster,” Boynton said on Monday. “I have had individual meetings with every player; each situation is a little different in regards to whether they are either capable of being back, or whether it’s in their best interest, or the interest in the program to be back with this next season. Not all of those decisions are necessarily my or theirs, some of them are combined.
“There’s a lot of moving parts. I wish I had better answers for you, but obviously as time evolves, this thing’s gonna be a moving target in a lot of ways. But I do know that we’re going to continue to address making sure that we are aggressive in the recruiting space. A lot of it will be through the transfer portal; we’ve already made a lot of contacts, there’s a lot of high-level interest in helping our program get to where we believe it could go, and I look forward to the work ahead of us.”
As I’ve written about before, and am trying to not sound like a broke record, here’s how the current scholarship situation stacks up for the Cowboys. Both Caleb Asberry and Bernard Kouma have exhausted their NCAA eligibility, giving back two scholarships. Every other player on scholarship still has at least one year of eligibility remaining. They’ve currently signed four incoming freshmen and will sign a fifth, Eric Dailey, in April. The program also gets back the two scholarships they forfeited this year as part of the NCAA sanctions.
So, should every player eligible return, plus the five freshmen, that puts OSUMBB at 14 scholarships. Obviously, not an ideal situation as that’s one over the NCAA mandated 13. However, as you read from Boynton above, they’ve already been active in recruiting the transfer portal. So, that tells you they expect some players to transfer.
Which ones are headed out the door? That’s yet to be seen, but would have to be expected to be more than one as the current scholarship situation and coaches recruiting the portal would indicate.
However it ends up working out, some changes certainly need to be made as the consistency in shooting throughout the season was entirely too inconsistent. As were being able to limit turnovers and make free throws, specifically late in games down the stretch.
“Starting on Tuesday night after we lost [to North Texas], I think I got home about midnight that night, I spent the next three hours, I think, from Nov. 7, the UT Arlington game, I watched every single game we played, every single possession of every game we played. There were some good moments, like you said, there were some times where you show how this team’s really grown. Then there were some times where I was like ‘who’s coaching these guys?’ and it was me. I’ve got to look in the mirror and figure out how to make those moments disappear. That’s my job. But there were times where we coached pretty well and put our team in position and it didn’t go our way…We had a double-digit lead against Southern Illinois, and I know people point to that game. We didn’t have a bad gameplan, we missed free throws and had turnovers late in the game. Same with Central Florida. Against K-State, I think we’re up 11 [points] with like five minutes to go, and we just didn’t finish. So, that’s going to be a lot of my focus this offseason, is consistent play, specifically on the offensive end, and being better finishers. Whether that be free throws, great possessions where the ball moves and gets into the paint, then whatever good shot you get from there. While I take total responsibility, the record’s mine, there’s some things we need to build on, and there’s some things we need to change. The things we need to build on I feel good about, and the things we need to change is on me to get fixed and we’ll do that somewhat through personnel, but somewhat through different schematic things.”
I don't think that Newton can transfer (essentially). He already transferred into OSU, and under the new NCAA rules, the NCAA most often will not let someone transfer to another school without sitting out a year.Darth Vader said:
And please let Woody be one who transfers. He needs to be the first to go.
