Oklahoma State Heads to Spain and Javon Small is the Player to Watch
STILLWATER – Saturday morning the Oklahoma State Cowboys will climb on a bus and head to DFW Airport for an overnight flight to Madrid, Spain and the start of a three-game, 11 days exhibition tour of the old world country. Head coach Mike Boynton is pumped and so are the players. With nine new players on this team they need the bonding time on and off the court. Boynton is pretty sure which of his new players will have the greatest impact on this trip and next season.
For Boynton it is not even close.
“The guy that has been the most impactful in making our team look different is Javon Small,” Boynton said the other day and without any prompt. “I thought he was good, I really did Robert, but you get the feel he really knows how to play his position, point guard. He knows how to make the game easier for his teammates.”
Important and veteran Cowboys agree with Boynton. The South Bend, Indiana native that landed at East Carolina came to Oklahoma State with good numbers, but on the practice court this summer and especially in the turned up practices to prepare for Spain, Small has over produced from what was expected.
“I love his game personally,” said Bryce Thompson, who sometimes was thrown into that role last season. “He can play the point, but he can go get a basket for you. We can play off each other and I can bring it (ball) up sometimes and I think that is valuable. He has done a good job of making everybody else better. He can get Brandon (Garrison) a ton of buckets by just driving it and kicking it down.”
“I feel like he was our missing piece,” said fellow guard John-Michael Wright. “He is a great teammate, a vocal guy. He has leader aspects and he wants to make everybody better, but he can go get his own buckets. I’m excited to put this thing forward to see what we can do.”
Now, you may want to sit down, but the 6-3, 195-pound junior had his name brought up in the same sentence as really the best previous point guard of the Boynton era and that was first round NBA Draft pick, a one-and-done in Cade Cunningham.
“He is probably the most important player that I have brought into this program since Cade (Cunningham) and I don’t say that lightly, no slight to anyone,” Boynton added. “I don’t think he will be a one and done draft, but I played the position and I’ve coached the position and he has a tremendous feel for how the game is played on both ends of the floor.”
That will be a big difference because as John-Michael Wright said. A point guard was the missing piece. This team needed a pure point and now it sounds like they have one.