Cowboys Honor Both The Ten and Sutton With Hard-Fought Win Over Arkansas
STILLWATER – The basketball game the week of Jan. 27 for Oklahoma State is always a special one because of Remember the Ten, but this year had some extra meaning as it was the first Remember the Ten without Eddie Sutton.
Coach Sutton passed May 23, 2020, a little more than a month after finally being inducted into the Naismith Hall of Fame.
What made the game that much more special was the fact the Cowboys were playing host to Arkansas, a school where coach Sutton had almost as much success as he had in Stillwater.
The Cowboys held on for a hard-fought 81-77 win over Arkansas, but both programs honored both Eddie Sutton and the Ten Cowboys who lost their lives on that tragic evening in Colorado on Jan. 27, 2001, as they wore shooting shirts pregame that had Eddie on the front and the Ten on the back. The Cowboys wore their shirts on the sidelines throughout the game.
There were numerous tributes throughout the game, as well as the athletic department honoring coach Sutton with Naismith Hall of Fame decals on the court that bears his name.
“It’s pretty hard to quantify, really, how much this day means to our program,” coach Boynton said of Remember the Ten Day in Gallagher-Iba Arena. “Because it means so much to our program, it has to mean equally as much to me personally. I’m a pretty lucky dude to be able to grace the sidelines as head coach in this building. A place where Mr. Iba basically, in many ways, invented the game as it would be played specifically played on the defensive end. Then his pupil, coach [Eddie] Sutton, raised the level of this program. So, I sometimes, when I do reflect about how I got here, and it’s because I’ve had really, really good people here with me. I’ve been really fortunate to have great mentors, work with really good coaches, had really good players, and today I’m glad we were able to put a smile on the families of the people who lost their lives 20 years ago, and to do it against a program where coach Sutton coached as well.”
When it comes to the history of both coach Sutton and the Ten Cowboys who lost their lives, unless the program commits a kid from Oklahoma who grew up an Oklahoma State fan, there aren’t many who know too much about the history.
“They’re pretty young guys, and young guys tend to be a little bit more oblivious to things like this, but I have a responsibility to do everything I can to bring awareness to it and to let them understand the gravity of what coach Sutton meant to our program and continues to mean to our program and the game of basketball,” said coach Boynton. “I remember the first and only time I really had a conversation with coach Sutton; it was at his house about two weeks after I got the job. He asked us to do two things, which was to play defense and to take care of the Cowboy basketball program. We’re doing our best to make sure we hold that promise.”
I’d have to say Boynton and his staff, which features Scott Sutton, the son of Eddie Sutton, are doing a pretty great job of teaching these young players the importance of the history of the program.
“Coach Mike, and really our whole administration, they came and talked to us and let us know how big of a deal it is and how serious it was back then for the whole school and the way that the school handled it,” Cade Cunningham said of Remember the Ten. “I feel like just hearing about how they handle something so tragic so well, to have that many people come into a gym and have people come back and watch from their professional teams, I think it just kind of goes to show the OSU family is real. It kind of gave us an extra spark for this game; we wanted to go out there and play hard and win to remember all those people from that day.”