‘Bone on Bone’: Lutz Challenging Cowboys Through Tough Practices to Find Defensive Grit

STILLWATER — Before the season started, this Cowboy basketball roster filled with new players often talked about how intense a Steve Lutz practice is. Now imagine what one of those practices is like after a loss to your rival in which defense was the major issue.

Lutz said his Oklahoma State squad practiced twice Monday. He said the first one lasted about an hour and a half before they got back together for another hour. Then the Cowboys practiced for “a couple hours” Tuesday before a community service engagement.

“We’ve always spent a lot of time in the film, but this is now bone on bone, man on man, who’s gonna stop the other person?” Lutz said Tuesday. “That’s where we’re at. All the schemes and all the vernacular that we use, it doesn’t matter if you don’t guard the basketball. It doesn’t matter if you don’t go box out your opponent and get the dang ball. It doesn’t matter, so we’re back to the basics of the physical, every possession, grind-it-out defense. That’s where we’re at.”

In that 85-76 loss to the Sooners on Saturday, OU made 11 of its final 16 shots. The Sooners shot 44% from the field, 39% from 3 and grabbed 11 offensive rebounds which led to 13 second-chance points.

After the game, Lutz said the result better spark an increase in defensive intensity or he’s “gonna find some different guys to play.”

Lutz started beating the drum of his team needing to grow defensively before the season even started, and it is something he has hit on in almost every postgame news conference of the Cowboys’ 9-0 start.

He’s often said the defensive turnaround is something that’s going to have to start in practice before it shows up in games. Let’s just say that Lutz is giving his team more of an opportunity in practice to find that turnaround.

“We’re probably doing more toughness drills,” Lutz said. “Instead of maybe doing eight drills in a practice, maybe we’re doing 12 drills in a practice, and there’s always winners and losers in everything. But what has happened is any time you get beat off the bounce and allow the ball to get to the middle, or any time you don’t check out, or any time you don’t go rebound, it’s an automatic down and back.”

What’s it like taking part in those practices?

“Tsss, man,” said Jaylen Curry as Vyctorius Miller smiled and shook his head next to him. “Just another day to get better. We working on the little stuff we need to work on — defense, talking. We’re mainly focusing on defense right now, that’s the main thing.”

“Shoot, we’ve been going at it every day at practice,” Miller added. “A lot of attention to detail, and we just gotta take defense as serious as offense.”

This team with a dozen newcomers will get its first opportunity to bounce back from a loss when the Cowboys host Kansas City at 7 p.m. Thursday in Gallagher-Iba Arena. OSU has three nonconference games remaining before the Pokes start Big 12 play Jan. 3 in Lubbock against Texas Tech.

Lutz said we all find some things out about his group between now and then.

“I told them that here in the next, I don’t know, week to 10 days to three weeks, whatever that number is, a lot is going to be revealed about their character,” Lutz said. “I do believe that they’ve got good character. They’re good players. They’re good people. But are they gonna be tough enough to bear down when it’s time to get a rebound? Are we gonna go box out? Are we gonna go make contact and make physical contact and hold our box out, and then go get the basketball? That’s where everything is still to be determined, but yeah, you’re gonna learn a lot about their character in between now and when we start Big 12 play.”