Boynton Believes His Players Resilient and Ready to Play to Honor the Ten
STILLWATER – How rough is it mentally to keep working hard, keep pushing 19 games into the season and still looking for that first conference win. The picture at the top of this story show Cowboys basketball head coach Mike Boynton with his “pistol firing” hand sign after last season’s game to “Remember the Ten” as his Oklahoma State team crushed Ole Miss 82-60 in what was also a Big 12-SEC Challenge Game.
Boynton is now guiding his much younger team that also include transfers into what he calls the most meaningful game of the season. This game will honor the family members as they join Oklahoma State and all of those gathered in Gallagher-Iba Arena in honoring the memory of the 10 men that were lost in that tragic plane crash on Jan. 27 2001 as the Oklahoma State team returned in three private planes from Boulder, Colo. and a game with the University of Colorado.
“It's an important game, and our guys need to understand that there’s some people in the stands that are sitting there hopeful that we are playing in a way that honors of the legacy of those folks who lost their lives that day,” Boynton added on Thursday in his news conference when asked about the game with West Virginia.
It is not lost on anyone that the Cowboys (8-11/0-6) are looking for their first win in Big 12 play and West Virginia is just above them in the standings at 2-4 in Big 12 play and 7-12 overall on the season. The Mountaineer are definitely better in Big 12 play. Last week they beat Kansas in the WVU Coliseum 91-85 and a big reason they’ve boosted their offense is Raequan Battle being eligible and averaging nearly 15 points a game.
“The team was expected to have a really good season, partly because they got the Pac-12’s assist leader, one of the nation's best scorers, a double-double guy from Syracuse,” Boynton said with a mini scouting report. “They really racked up in the portal. So when you look, they’ve got a lot of talented guys. They haven't figured out how to put together consistently…. They’re really talented. They can score really, really well. They rebound it well. They shoot it well. So there are a lot of things we’ve got to prepare for in the next couple of days to give ourselves a chance to win.”
Boynton also believes his players are more ready to win than some may think. Fans get down and it’s hard to get back up. The crowds inside Gallagher-Iba Arena tell you that. Boynton believes the players have more bounce back.
“I think kids are more resilient than adults generally think they are,” Boynton said. “They’re kind of in their own world and sometimes things don't necessarily affect them as much as maybe they affected me when I played. But I think there's an element of resiliency with this particular group, because many of them are living this for the first time.”
Saturday would be a great day to live through a Big 12 win for the first time and see if you can stack a few on top of it. Yes, it would be very meaningful to the families and friends that will make the pilgrimage back to remember.