STILLWATER – We’re about week into the summer drills and workouts for the Oklahoma State Cowboy basketball team, which is a crazy sentence to write. I’m not the biggest fan of idioms, or irony, but it seems like it was just yesterday I was writing about the 2024-25 roster and how it was put together.
But here we are, already into the summer of 2025 and head coach Steve Lutz met with the media on Tuesday afternoon to discuss how the 2025-26 roster was put together. It features seven transfers, four true freshman, two returning players from last year’s team and one walk-on.
You can view the complete roster HERE.
One of the things I’ve talked about pretty extensively on my radio show on Triple Play Sports Radio is how coach Lutz and his staff have had significantly more time to put this year’s roster together compared to last year. Lutz was brought on in early April, had to put together his coaching staff and recruit back the returning roster before diving into the portal.
While he had to replace to assistants from his staff, he had a full staff to put together his roster. They also had nearly two more months this year to recruit the portal, plus the entire season to put together scouting charts.
While he doesn’t give bad quotes, I feel coach Lutz gave us one of his best quotes today since arriving on campus last spring when I asked about the difference in putting this roster together compared to last year.
I’d like to think we took less risk, and were more diligent, and we had more time to investigate, and we had more time to vet who were are and were recruiting.
- Steve Lutz
“I'd like to think that we took less risk, and we were more diligent, and we had more time to investigate, and we had more time to vet who we are and were recruiting. I think that that's going to pay dividends down the road. I think that we've got a good group. That's not to say that last year's group wasn't a good group. I think that they gave us everything that they had. I thought that they played the right way, and they represented Oklahoma State well, but our bottom line is not to go to the NIT. Our bottom line is to go to the NCAA tournament. That's what I was hired for and that's what the administration and the boosters and the fans and the university expects. We had a much longer process of investigating and vetting players that fit our system and fit our program and fit our culture. I think that that will certainly prove at the end of the year to have value.”
There are no guarantees when it comes to putting a roster together, but this year’s roster, at least on paper, is better than last year’s at this time in the year.
However, regardless of how good or bad Lutz and Co. feels their roster is, there’s always having to get them to mesh together well.
It's part of coaching, right? I'd rather have a team full of guys that can score and a team full of guys that are athletic and are good people versus the other option. I'd rather have to get guys to take maybe a little lesser role than to try to overachieve. We were trying to be cognizant with addressing some of our scoring issues from last year's team and not having that this year. So, every player that was recruited here was told the same thing. That we're not promising you anything. That the best players will play and those that can help us achieve the goals of winning the Big 12 and going to the NCAA tournament, they're going to play. So, no one comes in here with any agenda that's any different than the other teammates. And again, as far as I'm concerned, if you can get ahead of that in the recruiting process, it shouldn't prove to be an issue during the season.
We’re roughly four months out from getting to see this team start its non-conference slate. I’m excited to see what they can do in practice, but nothing matters until November when we can see if the coaches put together a talented group of players who can play together.
