Five Questions to Ponder to Get Excited about the Oklahoma State Basketball Season

The Cowboy football season hasn’t been pretty, but Steve Lutz’s Cowboys have an exhibition game next week, as basketball season is almost here.

As a bit of a primer for Lutz’s second year at the helm of Oklahoma State’s program, I’ve laid out five questions that I’m interested in finding out the answer to this season.

1. How Much Better Is This Team Offensively

One of the major sticking points of Lutz’s media availability a few weeks back was that this group is better offensively.

The Cowboys averaged 73 points a game last season, which ranked 11th in the Big 12. They shot 33.1% from 3, which stood 10th in the league.

So, just how much better can this group be on offense?

Could the Cowboys shoot 35% from deep? That’s a number the Cowboys haven’t eclipsed since the 2018-19 season when Lindy Waters and Thomas Dziagwa each shot well above 40% to carry the Pokes in Mike Boynton’s second season.

Thirty-five percent would’ve put the Cowboys’ seventh in the Big 12 last season. Five of the six Big 12 schools that shot 35% or better from deep made the NCAA Tournament and had an average seed of 4.

A jump from 33.1% to 35% doesn’t seem like a ridiculous amount, but it could make a big difference on the scoreboard of some of these games.

2. How Good Are the Foreigners?

Recruiting rankings shouldn’t always be taken as gospel, but more often than not, they provide a fairly good idea of what level a high school player is at as he enters the college game.

Well, there isn’t exactly a ranking process for the growing number of players headed from overseas to the college game, so without seeing them play, it’s hard to know how the foreigners stack up.

This OSU squad has a five players whose hometowns are listed outside of the United States. Some of those guys have played in the U.S. before — like Oregon State transfer Parsa Fallah (Amol, Iran) or incoming freshman Benjamin Ahmed (Kogi State, Nigeria), who played high school ball stateside.

But a pair of new Pokes are fresh off their travels in Daniel Guetta (Kiryat Gay, Israel) and Lefteris Mantzoukas (Iannina, Greece). On top of that, Andrija Vukovic (Cukarica, Belgrade, Serbia) was in Stillwater last season, but he arrived late and was dealing with a back injury last season that meant his year didn’t really get off the ground.

If I had to predict one of those three to make the biggest impact on the Cowboys’ season, I’d lean Mantzoukas given his background. Listed at 6-foot-9, 230 pounds, he’s a 22-year-old freshman. He’s spent eight seasons completing in the Greek Basketball League, including four of those with 2024 EuroLeague champion Panathinaikos Athens, one of Europe’s premier teams.

He was a career 40% 3-point shooter. He was the youngest player to ever start at GBL game, doing so while he was just 14 years old. In 2023, the won the Greek League’s Young Player of the Year and Most Improved Player awards.

How do those accolades transfer to American college basketball? I guess we’ll find out.

3. This Team Can Have Five Shooters on the Floor?

Lutz had a presser ahead of the start of official practices a few weeks back in which he mentioned this group was capable of having five guys on the floor who are capable of shooting the 3.

“We’d be a little bit smaller,” Lutz said, “but it’s a fun way to play.”

Trying to read between the lines, I think that would involve Mantzoukas playing center with guards and wings spread out around him.

That’d be a far cry from last season, where there were often just one or two guys on the floor you were confident in shooting the 3.

4. Are There Concerns at Center?

Going along with that, the Cowboys are relatively inexperienced at center, so that small-ball spread might be a necessity at certain points.

Fallah (6-10, 250 pounds) is the only upper classman I’d consider a center. Joining him are Vukovic (a 6-11, 270-pound sophomore), Ahmed (a 6-10, 275-pound freshman) and Mekhi Ragland (a 6-11, 330-pound freshman).

Fallah averaged 12.8 points and four rebounds a game at Oregon State last season, but should he get in foul trouble or banged up at some point during the year, the Cowboys don’t have a ton of experience to fall back on.

Lutz said Ahmed and Ragland have been in and out with injuries in the early parts of the school year. He said Ahmed recently had surgery recently and had screws and a plate put in his foot.

Maybe the answer to potential depth concerns is Vukovic now that he’s had a year of adjustment and his hopefully past the back troubles that were plaguing him last season. Or maybe the answer is to just play a bit smaller and turn up the tempo.

5. Can Crotty Contribute?

The 6-foot-6 Ryan Crotty is the other from-high school freshman on the Cowboys’ roster.

He was a four-star prospect in the 2025 class and chose OSU over offers from Miami, Virginia Tech, Clemson, Butler and others. His most notable attribute to this point is shooting the 3.

Crotty hit a state-record 142 3-pointers as a junior at The Miller School in Virginia and did so at a ridiculous 46% clip. As a senior, he nailed 115 3s on 43% shooting.

If he can get up to the speed of the college game, that sounds like quite the weapon for the Cowboys to have for some time to come.

“Crotty’s doing good,” Lutz said. “He probably made about two or three 3s with somebody in his face today in practice, and I’m like, ‘Guys, you know he can shoot. What are we doing? You have to take that shot away.’ But he’s consistently making shots.”