KANSAS CITY, Mo – Big 12 basketball media day is in full swing at the T-Mobile Center, which means we’re less than two weeks away from the start of the 2025-26 season for Oklahoma State basketball in Stillwater.
Head coach Steve Lutz and players Parsa Fallah and Robert Jennings II just left the stage, which featured a great round table format. Instead of just relying on questions from the media, players and coaches have a conversation with college basketball analyst, Mike O’Donnell.
Jennings kicked things off when he was asked by O’Donnell about the new-look team and the impressive performance in the exhibition against Auburn.
“Just a whole new team, so everybody coming in, I just feel like we’ve jelled really well together,” Jennings started. “Like coach [Lutz] said, just being able to go on the road and get a win, it really opened my eyes because being able to be in a locker room and just see how we responded going into the half, it was a close game, so I told [the team] going into the locker room ‘we’re gonna go one way or the other, this game is not over, we’ve got another 20 minutes to play.’ So, just to see us pull together and come out there and take the gameplan coach had set and execute, I feel like that was the biggest thing. Just the first step in a long season.”
The exhibition is a super-small sample size you can’t use anywhere other than preseason excitement, but what Jennings mentioned might be the most important part of the game: the team went into the locker room with the lead and understood the importance of staying together and fighting throughout the second half. There were more than a few times with last year’s team not only did they not enter the half with the lead but didn’t rally late.
Film study on Isaiah Coleman.
Jennings was asked about teammate and Seton Hall transfer guard, Isaiah Coleman. The Big 12 showed a clip of Coleman in a Big East tournament game against Georgetown. He came off an Iverson cut, goes back door and gets open down low, but the guard with the ball misses him, so he cuts back out and hits a midrange bucket.
“It’s funny you brought up he moves without the ball,” Jennings said. “In the Auburn scrimmage, my first assist to him was a backdoor cut. Zay looked at me, and I said I can make that pass, keep moving, I’m going to find you. After that, there was two or three more backdoor cuts, and he just kept moving. Every time I got to a new spot, I’d stop on two feet, and I knew Zay was gonna cut. That’s just one thing that speaks volumes to his game, and then he’s a super athlete. So, when he cuts, he can play above the rim and can finish at the rim. Even getting open on the 3-point line, he can hit an open three. That’s a big part of his game.”
Towards the end of the round table, Lutz was asked about point guard, Kanye Clary.
“He obviously had done a great job when he was at Penn State, right? He played for coach [Mike] Rhoades, he played for Micah Shrewsberry, that I worked with when we were at Purdue together, and averaged 14, 15, 16 [points] a game in the Big Ten. So, I knew he could score the basketball, but I’ve also been extremely bullish on guys who are extremely fast, and he’s got speed and quickness. This year’s team, I think he’s gonna have a little bit different role. I don’t know if we need him to score 15 a game, but I try to tell he and Jaylen Curry and Dan Guetta, I want you guys to lead the country in assists, because I think we do have offensive fire power, and if he can keep the ball moving and he can get the guys the basketball in the right spots, we’re going to be able to score the ball.”
