Oklahoma State Looking to Get Right Against 0-5 Colorado
STILLWATER – Saturday’s game against Colorado is important in more ways than one for Oklahoma State. It’s a basketball game, so a win is obviously important. The Cowboys need to bounce back, and they’ll be doing so against a Buff team that’s 0-5 in Big 12 play.
The most important aspect of this game being Remember the Ten.
Head coach Steve Lutz gave a great quote on how he’s immersed himself into the history of Remember the Ten.
“I’ve just been consumed for the last 36 hours with watching all of those, and after watching all of those, the gravity hits you,” Lutz said. “There’s tears in my eyes to watch coach [Eddie] Sutton have to address everybody in Gallagher-Iba when they had that memorial. Like, I don’t know how the heck he did it. Anybody that ever says a bad word about coach [Sutton] is crazy because nobody prepares you for that. Nobody prepares you for that.
“I just know that when it’s all said and done as the ambassador for this program, I will never, never let their memory go away. We will always represent them to the highest degree. We’ll never forget them, and their memory will carry on forever. That is my promise to everybody at Oklahoma State and our alums and the families of the Ten.”
So, based on the emotion of the game, the Cowboys will hopefully be playing on a different level than they have in the past two games.
Then looking at Colorado, the Buffs have started Big 12 play 0-5. They lost to Iowa State to start conference play, followed by losses to Arizona State, UCF, West Virginia and Cincinnati. Now, most of these losses have been close. It was a 10-point loss to the Cyclones, one point on the road at UCF, eight points at home to WVU and six points at home to Cincinnati.
So, despite being 0-5, the Buffs are close to a win.
They’re averaging nearly 74 points per game on 46% shooting from the floor and 35% from 3-point range. They’re bringing down nearly 37 rebounds per game. They’re holding opponents to 71 points per game on 42% shooting from the floor and 32% from 3-point range.
They do, however, have 240 turnovers on the year. That’s nearly 50 more than the Pokes have on the year and six more than the Pokes have forced.
This isn’t a guaranteed win for the Pokes. Not by a longshot. But this is a winnable game for the Pokes if they play the brand of basketball we saw against Kansas State and in the second half of the BYU game.