Cowgirl Basketball: Oklahoma State Remains Unbeaten with Dominant Win against UCA

BOX SCORE

STILLWATER — Two unbeaten teams battled Thursday on Eddie Sutton Court, and it wasn’t particularly close.

Oklahoma State beat Central Arkansas 89-58 in Gallagher-Iba Arena. UCA entered the contest at 3-0 while averaging 84 points a game and holding their opponents to just 47 points a game, but they hadn’t played a team like the Cowgirls. OSU advances to 5-0 with the win, and the Cowgirls are now averaging 85 points a game this season.

“To have 33 made field goals on 24 assists, I think that speaks volumes to the selflessness of this group and just the buy in that they have to do what we’re trying to get them to do,” OSU coach Jacie Hoyt said. “Defensively, I think we still have a lot of room to grow and need to get better, but overall, I just really thought this was a great, solid and complete game for us.”

There wasn’t really a time that Thursday’s game was close. OSU opened on a 9-0 run. The Cowgirls scored 30 points in the first quarter while shooting 55% from the field and 57% from 3, and then they didn’t cool in the second quarter, putting up another 22 points on 58% shooting from the field and 80% from deep. That all led to the Cowgirls having a 21-point lead at the half.

The longest run UCA had Thursday was a 6-0 run toward the end of the first half that cut OSU’s lead down to 17. Total dominance.

Out of Classen SAS, Micah Gray led the Cowgirls in scoring. She put up 19 points and was plus-30, meaning OSU was 30 points better than the Bears while Gray was on the floor. In her first season with the Cowgirls after playing at Texas Southern and Seton Hall, Gray is no stranger to scoring. She has a career-high of 41 points in a game and has 15 career games of at least 20.

Hitting a quartet of 3s, Macey Huard contributed 16 points off the OSU bench — part the 41 bench points OSU finished with. Senior guard Anna Gret Asi came into the day averaging 17.3 points a game but needed only nine against the Bears. She also had a team-best five assists and three steals.

“That’s a really awesome thing that we’ve got going for us right now is we do have so many weapons,” Hoyt said. “… It’s great just knowing at any given time anyone can go off, and it can be anyone’s day or anyone’s night. The great thing about this team is they don’t care. They don’t care who it is, and they’re willing to do whatever it takes to help their teammates be successful.

“I think as a staff, we’re still really trying to figure it out. We had about a three-hour meeting a couple days ago to try to figure out rotations and how we can best help them. That’s still a work in progress, but I like what we did today, and I think that we can continue to figure things out. But our depth is definitely our biggest strength right now.”

Rylee Langerman’s four points might not jump off the box score, but she did a lot of the dirty work against UCA, recording eight rebounds in just 14 minutes on the floor.

And if you haven’t seen the Cowgirls yet this season, you probably haven’t seen center Tenin Magassa. Originally from France, Magassa is listed at 6-foot-6. She spent time at Dayton and Rhode Island before coming to Stillwater. The Cowgirls are able to work inside out with Magassa, throwing the ball into her, waiting on the defense to collapse before she’ll find someone on the perimeter and send the defense into a series of rotations. Magassa scored 11 on Thursday to go with five rebounds and a pair of blocks.

“That’s Rylee’s role,” Hoyt said. “We talk about doing your job. Everyone has a very, very specific job to do, and rebounding is Rylee’s primary job for us. She did a heck of a job today, came in and was a great spark for us in that area. She needs to continue to do that for us. She understands her assignment, though. That was a great game for her. …

“When you’ve got a big of (Magassa’s) caliber inside but then you’ve got shooters to surround her, that’s hard to stop. That’s where I think what we were saying, just our depth and our different weapons, we’re a very hard team to guard right now. We’ve gotta continue to get better, and I gotta continue to find was to help them. But I like what we’ve got going right now. Sometimes it’s an inside game, and sometimes it’s an outside game.”

Jacie Hoyt’s Postgame News Conference

Up Next

Opponent: Chicago State
When: 6:30 p.m. Monday
Where: Gallagher-Iba Arena
Watch: ESPN+