Steve Lutz On Cowboys Handling Difficult Loss, "They’re Resilient"

STILLWATER – Wednesday night’s 73-72 loss to TCU was about as brutal of a way to lose a game as you could think of. Oklahoma State trailed the entire game, then finally taking their first lead of the game with 18 seconds left, before Vasean Allette caught a tipped three-quarter court pass and drilled a deep 3-pointer to give them the one-point win.

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Allette taking the buzzer beater to win.

It wasn’t a perfect game by the Cowboys by any means, but they did enough to win what would’ve been their first road win in the Big 12 in a year and their first win in Fort Worth since February 2017.

But that didn’t happen, and they have to find way to move on. I asked head coach Steve Lutz if it would be hard to get them to bounce back, to which he answered with a smile and a chuckle.

“We’ll see today at practice,” said Lutz. “They’re resilient, kids are resilient just like adults. Set the bar really high, set the expectations really high and make them adhere to them. They’ll ring the bell, I hope, [in Thursday’s practice,] but they should take [the loss] hard. If you’re sitting here in this interview and you’re not taking it hard, something’s wrong with you.

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Lutz at TCU.

“You think I haven’t played [the end of the TCU game] over a million times and I haven’t thought ‘well, what if I did this, what if I did this?’ We talked about these things on the sidelines as a staff, but the fact of the matter is you go with the best decision that you can that gives you the best probability to win. Sometimes that works, sometimes that doesn’t.”

Another tough loss was on the road in Lubbock against Texas Tech back in January. The Cowboys dug themselves a deep hole in the first half, before going on a 16-1 run in the second half to make it just a three-point game, 52-49, before Tech pulled away late to win by 10 points, 64-54.

They’ve got a chance on Saturday to pull off what many people would consider to be impossible: beat Tech. But it’s going to take more than just getting within a bucket or two or a possession or two. It’s going to take a lot more than getting behind in the first half by double figures, which they’ve proven then can do.

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Ousman’s dunk gave Oklahoma State the 71-70 lead.

“Those guys are so disappointed because that would’ve been our first true road win [in the Big 12] and we would’ve won three [games] out of four. Now, you’ve got Texas Tech coming here, who’s top 15 in the country; you’d like to think there’s a lot of momentum,” said Lutz.

“With that being said, why can’t we beat Texas Tech on Saturday? That’s got to be our mindset today at 3:30 and our mindset tomorrow morning. Then at 2 o’clock on Saturday, let’s tip it up and let’s fight. We had opportunities at their place to have it one to two possession game and we came up a little bit short. Again, missed layup, think about the missed layup at Texas Tech.”

We’ll have a more in-depth preview of the game tomorrow here on Pokes Report.