OSU’s Captains Played A Lot of Minutes This Season

Cameron McGriff, Lindy Waters and Thomas Dziagwa did something this season that hasn’t been done since the trio of Marcus Smart, Markel Brown and Le’Bryan Nash.

For the first time since the 2013-14 season, three Oklahoma State players played at least 1,000 minutes in the same season. McGriff, Waters and Dziagwa played 3,190 combined minutes this season. That’s more than 53 hours on a basketball court over the span of 32 games.

“The way my body’s feeling, it feels like a long year,” Waters said. “But, I wouldn’t want to go back and change a thing about it.”

The Smart/Brown/Nash trio played 3,231 minutes in 2013-14, a year removed from playing 3,284 minutes in 2012-13. In the 2013-14 year, Brown alone played 1,201 minutes (about 20 hours).

Between the sets of trios, only three OSU players played at least 1,000 minutes in a season: Jeffrey Carroll in 2017-18, Phil Forte in 2016-17 and Phil Forte in 2014-15.

McGriff played the most this season. He was on the floor for 1,084 minutes, narrowly edging out Waters’ 1,080. The two played 33.9 and 33.8 minutes per game, respectively. To make the Top 25 list in OSU history, they would have had to play at least 34.1 minutes per game.

In the 1983-84 season, Joe Atkinson played 38.9 minutes a game in OSU’s 28 games, a school and Big Eight record. Randy Rutherford holds the school record for total minutes played in a season with 1,348 in 1994-95.

McGriff played at least 40 minutes three times this year (games lasts 40 minutes by the way), and OSU had only one game go into overtime. Waters too played more than 40 in the OT game against Texas Tech.

Entering this season Dziagwa played 540 minutes in his first two seasons combined. His on-court time nearly doubled that this season, as he played 1,026 minutes.

It’s probably unlikely McGriff, Waters and Dziagwa all play 1,000 minutes next season, as this year it was done much out of necessity. For much of the season, OSU coach Mike Boynton had only seven scholarship players to use. With at least four more scholarship players coming in, the three will likely get take a breather every so often.

“I try not to think about it, but definitely, the season took a toll on my body, but I look at it as a just a little thing,” McGriff said. “Now I’ll have plenty of time to get my health back together.”