‘They Ain’t Scared’: What Steve Lutz Learned about His Team in the Auburn Exhibition

STILLWATER — Steve Lutz took his second Cowboy basketball team down to Birmingham for an exhibition against a team coming off a Final Four run. And the Cowboys won.

Oklahoma State beat Auburn 97-95 last week, going to overtime in the game that didn’t count on records to do so. The Cowboys were shorthanded, with four player sitting on the pine in street clothes. Eight of the 11 Cowboys who did play were wearing an OSU jersey for the first time.

And despite all of that, the Cowboys went to hostile territory against a preseason Top 25 team and won.

“They ain’t scared,” said Lutz on Monday on if there was anything that surprised him about the Auburn exhibition. “At the end of the day, when you go to an environment like that — today was practice No. 18. We probably, at that point, had 13 or 14 real practices, and we haven’t really had a tremendous amount of, what I would consider, real practices because we’ve been so short on bodies.

“You find out. When you get into pressure situations, you’re either gonna fight or you’re gonna wilt. And we fought. That’s obviously something that’s great to see.”

Kanye Clary, Christian Coleman, Vyctorius Miller and Benjamin Ahmed were the Cowboys who sat out. Lutz said Monday that he doesn’t expect any of those injuries to be super long term but that Ahmed will likely be the last of the group back.

OSU also had four players foul out against Auburn, as the Pokes were whistled for 34 personal fouls. Auburn attempted 49 free throws.

The foul trouble plus the injuries meant a few Cowboys had to handle a big work load in Lutz’s up-tempo system despite it being preseason.

UMass transfer Jaylen Curry played 34 minutes, where he scored 23 points, including a game-winning layup. He also had a quartet of assists and no turnovers.

Seton Hall transfer Isaiah Coleman dropped an efficient 28 points, going 9-for-15 from the field. He also had eight rebounds and a game-high three steals.

Green Bay transfer Anthony Roy played 42 minutes, where he also scored 28 points (on 50% shooting) to go with a dozen rebounds. Roy hit a deep go-ahead 3-pointer with less than a minute left in regulation and hit two more 3s in overtime. He’s the type of marksman OSU simply didn’t have last season, and bluntly, there might not be many nationally who can fill it up like Roy can.

“It’s a fantastic luxury and something we didn’t have, obviously, last year,” Lutz said. “I’m excited about what Anthony did against Auburn the other night, and again, I think he’s got a long, long ways on the other side of the ball for growth. And if he can do both of those things because he rebounded it, he shot it. The downside against Auburn was he some careless turnovers. He had six turnovers. But if he becomes a two-way player, I think Anthony Roy’s gonna have a chance to be a professional for a long time.”

It’s a one game exhibition sample size, so the Pokes have plenty of work to do. But given online discourse, the fanbase seems to be really excited about the idea of watching relevant basketball again.

The Cowboys have another exhibition this weekend against SMU in Dallas.

“I would say that for the first exhibition game of the year, those guys performed at a high, high level,” Lutz said. “I think that that hopefully gives us a glimpse of what maybe could come down the road. …

“Winning and being a coach is very fleeting. As quick as people are to praise us for beating Auburn, if SMU were to beat the heck out of us, they’d be wanting to fire me again. Instead of Nutz for Lutz, it’d be … whatever. You know what I mean? I get it.”