Five Thoughts on Oklahoma State’s 81-69 Loss to Kansas

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STILLWATER — The Cowboys weren’t expected to beat the eighth-ranked Jayhawks, so it’s hard to call Wednesday’s result much of a letdown. But a fourth straight loss here in mid-February didn’t do the Pokes any favors when it comes to the big picture.

Oklahoma State lost to Kansas 81-69 on Saturday in Gallagher-Iba Arena. Here are five thoughts on the game.

1. A Horrendous Start

The Cowboys were down 17-6 at the first media timeout with the Jayhawks going 6-for-7 from the field in that stretch.

OSU, meanwhile, hit just four of its first 20 shots.

It wasn’t until there was about five minutes left in the opening half when it felt like the Cowboys finally arrived in the basketball game, but they were down 39-16 by that point.

From there, OSU rattled off a 13-4 run going into the half. In most cases, a 13-4 run to close a half probably means you’ve at worst got a competitive basketball game on your hands, but on Wednesday it meant that the Cowboys were still down 14.

“You can’t play a team like Kansas, which is a great program, first half like that and come out second half and play hard and expect to win the game,” Parsa Fallah said. “It doesn’t work like that. I think it’s a maturity that we as  players need to work on. We need to talk to each other and get that part right.”

2. Darryn Peterson Had a Great, Short Game

It looked for a bit like the better basketball game would be OSU vs. Darryn Peterson rather than OSU vs. KU.

Peterson dropped 20 on the Cowboys in the first half. He played only three minutes in the second before he went to the bench with his highly publicized cramps.

He hit a 3 with six minutes left in the opening half to get to 20, and OSU had 16 points by that point.

Peterson finished 6-for-10 from 3 in just 18 total minutes on the floor.

“You can’t give the guy space,” OSU coach Steve Lutz said. “He’s obviously proven he’s a very good 3-point shooter. We weren’t there on the catch. Obviously we talked about being there on the catch and making him a pull-up jump shooter rather than a catch-and-shoot guy, and that falls on me and the staff and the players. We’ve gotta do better, but he’s a good player. He’s gonna be a pro for a long time in my mind.”

The past few weeks have seen two guys in contention to be the No. 1 NBA Draft pick visit Gallagher-Iba Arena in Peterson and BYU’s AJ Dybantsa. It turns out the draft projectors know what they’re talking about, as both are really good.

3. KU Deserves Some Credit for One of OSU’s Worst Offensive Outings

This marks just the second time this season the Cowboys didn’t hit 70 points, with the other outing being OSU’s 68-65 loss to TCU in Fort Worth.

But that’s sort of what Kansas does. The Jayhawks came into the night ranking fifth in the league in scoring defense, giving up just 68 points a game.

KU ranks first in the league in opponent field-goal percentage, allowing teams to hit just 38.5% of their shots. The Jayhawks held OSU to 34.8% shooting Wednesday, just the fourth time this year the Cowboys have been held under 40%. It’s the second-worst shooting game OSU has had this season after shooting 24.6% against Arizona.

4. Starters Played Basically All the Minutes

For the first time this season, OSU didn’t have a bench player play at least 15 minutes in a game.

That meant that four of the Cowboys’ starters played at least 31 minutes with point guard Kanye Clary playing all but 55 seconds of this game. Isaiah Coleman was the leader in bench minutes with 11. Every other bench player played seven or fewer.

Jaylen Curry would normally be the guy to give Clary a rest, but he played just five minutes Wednesday. Lutz said that was a coach’s decision.

Andrija Vukovic appears to be going through some sort of ailments. He didn’t play in the Arizona or TCU games after more heavily featuring in the rotation before that. He played just six minutes Wednesday night.

This comes the same day OSU’s roster officially went from 15 to 14 with the departure of Lefteris Mantzoukas, but it’s not that Mantzoukas was playing a ton, as he had played just 32 total minutes across the Pokes’ past 15 games.

All that is to say that the Cowboys’ depth seems to be dwindling a bit here toward the end of the season, which is far from ideal for a team looking to turn its fortunes around.

5. It’s Not Technically Over, But It’s Definitely Starting to Feel That Way

Believe it or not, there is still a path to the Cowboys making the NCAA Tournament, but it’s hard to watch a bubble team lose four straight games and think that a likely possibility.

This loss pushed the Pokes down to 4-9 in Big 12 play, meaning in order to finish .500, which you’d feel pretty good about getting to the tournament with, the Cowboys would have to win their remaining five games.

What are those games you might ask? At Colorado, vs. West Virginia, at Cincinnati, at UCF and vs. Houston. Those provide, for now, four more Quad 1 opportunities. Considering Houston is Houston and the fact that OSU has won one Big 12 road game thus far in Lutz’s tenure, it’s safe to say a 5-0 finish is unlikely.

What they’d need to do is get as many as they can over these next few weeks then make a bit of a run in Kansas City.

“I know I sound like a broken record, but it’s the Big 12,” Lutz said. “You have an opportunity to be a Quad 1 win at Colorado on Saturday — you gotta go do it. And then you got West Virginia coming back here. You know what I mean? So, we just gotta keep plugging, right? Keep plugging.”