Notebook: Vukovic Battling Through Torn Meniscus, OSU’s Young Bigs Getting Extended Minutes

STILLWATER — The Cowboys’ close their regular season on Saturday before they’ll hope to make a run at the Big 12 Tournament to get back into NCAA Tournament contention — a tall task.

Oklahoma State hosts Houston at 11 a.m. Saturday for Senior Day. OSU coach Steve Lutz and seniors Anthony Roy and Christian Coleman met with reporters Thursday to give updates on the program. Here are three things that stood out.

Vukovic Battling Through Torn Meniscus

Serbian center Andrija Vukovic has had a sleeve on his leg for a while now, and it’s been evident that leg isn’t 100%.

Lutz told PFB on Thursday that Vukovic has a torn meniscus and is going to have surgery once the season ends.

That fact makes Vukovic’s performance in Orlando all the more impressive. He got a scratch all the way down the side of his face early on in the game to pair with his bum knee.

Vukovic subbed out with nine minutes to play in regulation, and it looked like he would sit the rest of the game. Benjamin Ahmed fouled out, but OSU initially played small ball in his absence. When the game got sent to overtime, however, Vukovic powered through, scoring four points and bringing down three boards in the extra five minutes.

Two of those OT rebounds were offensive. The first of those led to a pair of Anthony Roy free throws and the second led to a Kanye Clary 3. So really, Vukovic was at least partly responsible for 11 of OSU’s OT points.

“I’m super proud of him,” Lutz said. “… He showed a competitive will to win. When the chips were down and the ball was loose, he went and got the ball and got us two or three really, really big offensive rebounds.

“I’m extremely proud of him. You just think of where he was when he arrived in August of (2024) to where he is today, he’s made a lot of improvement.”

It wasn’t just his coach that noticed the dirty work Vukovic put in.

“Losing somebody like Parsa hurts, and Mili came in and he just made game-winning play after game-winning play after game-winning play,” Roy said. “Huge kudos to him. Without him, we not winning that game.”

Searching for the Positives in Fallah’s Injury

Nobody is going to argue that the OSU basketball team was better with Parsa Fallah being off the court, but if you search hard enough, you can find some good in a bad situation.

When asked what has kept the team going through the rough stretch ahead of that UCF win, Roy said playing for each other and playing for the guys who can’t play. Roy and Coleman met with reporters Thursday. Both are seniors who saw their classmate’s college career end in an instant.

“Me personally, I feel like just don’t take it for granted because it can be taken away from you just in the blink of an eye,” Coleman said. “Just playing for Parsa and playing for everybody else that can’t play, it’s just putting it all in our heads don’t take basketball for granted, don’t take nothing for granted, don’t take no possession for granted. Just go out there and play your hardest and give it your all.”

Again, the Cowboys would be better with Fallah on the floor, but this also provides Vukovic (a sophomore), Ahmed (a freshman) and Mekhi Ragland (a freshman) more of an opportunity to play meaningful basketball early in their careers.

“As much as you would love to have Parsa, right, and we miss him, you have to look at the bright side of it,” Lutz said. “And the next man has to step up, and both those guys (Vukovic and Ahmed), especially at Central Florida the other night, between the two of them, their stat line was pretty darn good. It wasn’t quite what Parsa’s is, but they don’t have to be Parsa. They have to be Ben, and they have to be Mili.

“It’s getting them valuable minutes. It’s allowing us to evaluate them in the heat of the moment because you’re gonna get to the portal here in the spring, and you’re gonna need to find guys that either compliment them or play along with them. So, it’s fantastic for them and for the program.”

The Narrow Path to the NCAA Tournament

The Cowboys’ NCAA Tournament dreams technically aren’t dead yet, but it would definitely take some doing at this point.

OSU welcomes Houston to GIA on Saturday before heading up to Kansas City for the Big 12 Tournament.

The most sure way to get into the field for the Cowboys would be winning the tournament in KC. They could also find themselves back on the bubble if they can beat Houston on Saturday before going on a run in the tournament.

In four years as a head coach, Lutz has been to the NCAA Tournament three times — twice with Texas A&M Corpus Christi and once with Western Kentucky.

“I’ve been used to going to the conference tournament and having to figure out a way to win it,” Lutz said. “These guys are a resilient bunch, as I’ve said a lot. They’re not perfect by any means, but we’ve got good character and the guys want to go to the NCAA Tournament. They’ve shown the resolve to possibly pull that off.

“It’s gonna be a huge feat to go to Kansas City. You’d probably have to beat Houston, and then you’d probably have to win three, four games. But that can happen. We’ve shown that we can beat Top 25 teams. We’ve gotta just show that we can do it away from Gallagher-Iba Arena, and that’s our big test.”