Daily Bullets (Mar. 24): Tech a Template for OSU Hoops?

Good morning. I would like to commend Seth Duckworth for his outstanding wrestling coverage all season. We unearthed Seth from somewhere deep in a wrestling message board, and his work on OSU’s program, John Smith and wrestling recruiting has been top-notch. Follow him if you’re not already. 

Bullets Rundown

• Sean talks Eddie
• Down goes Daton
• Chris Beard vs. Mike Boynton

Scores

• SB: Baylor 2 | OSU 1
• BB: OSU 5 | Kansas State 4

OSU Bullets

• Sean Sutton talks about his dad and what the Hall of Fame means. To nobody’s surprise it means a lot more to us than it does him.

The 2019 class will be officially announced next month at the Final Four in Minneapolis, but Sean Sutton said he hoped to hear the outcome in the next week or so. “He thinks it would be nice to be in there, but I don’t think he views it as he’s got to have it to justify his career or anything like that,” Sean Sutton said. [NewsOK]

Still … it’s laughable that he’s not in and one of the more underrated (and, granted, under-the-radar) sports snubs in recent memory.

• Daton Fix went down in the finals after looking like he was going to destroy the entire arena in this pregame video (I love wrestling warmup videos, they’re secretly insane). Here’s Duckworth.

In the sudden victory period Fix hit a slide by. As Fix was attempting to work behind Suriano it looked as though Suriano clearly pulled Fix’s headgear to prevent him from going behind and scoring. Fix paused to ask for the call and did not get it. Suriano then shot and took Fix down to win 4-2. [PFB]

Not good.

So Northern Iowa, not #okstate or Iowa State or OU, is the only Big 12 school with a national champion.

— Dekota Gregory (@dekotagregory) March 24, 2019

Crazy stat. If Daton Fix wins over Nick Suriano, he will be the 143rd individual NCAA champion for #okstate. If Nick Suriano wins, he'll be the first for Rutgers.

— Seth Duckworth (@Seth_Duckworth) March 23, 2019

Then this happened!

Suriano’s dad yelling at John post match wanting to get a piece…news flash buddy you don’t want any of that #badideal

— Rex and The Chief (@RexandTheChief) March 23, 2019

Real talk: I would pay real American dollars to watch somebody go at John Smith after one of these matches. Many of them.

• Bill Haisten did the Chris Beard thing, and it was great. Aside: I don’t love that Texas Tech has been more heavily covered in March by OSU-centric papers than OSU has. Not those papers’ or writers’ fault, of course, that’s what they should do. It just stinks that OSU is completely out of the picture while Tech has taken it over.

A lot of coaches brag about their program’s “culture,” but there probably aren’t that many places that have a clearly defined, positive culture. At Texas Tech, Beard does seem to have forged an ideal culture – one that combines hard coaching with personalities who can flourish with hard coaching.

Within the context of team sports, a positive culture is defined by having a roster of players who like each other, and by having coaches who can push players to the limits while not having the players hate their guts. [Tulsa World]

I know this isn’t apples and oranges, but I think the Tech template is one OSU should (obviously) be aspiring to. And if we’re going to do the thing …

Chris Beard

Year 1: 18-14 (no NCAAs)
Year 2: 27-10 (NCAAs)
Year 3: 27-6 (NCAAs and counting)

Mike Boynton

Year 1: 21-15 (no NCAAs)
Year 2: 12-20 (no NCAAs)
Year 3: ?

• This from Hallie Hart on Allie Reynolds and the end of an era is excellent. I have complicated feelings about the future of OSU baseball. I literally grew up watching games at Allie P. when I was the same age my kids are now, and while I love the move into a new facility, the passage of time always gets me.

“He loved baseball, but he also loved Oklahoma,” Sullivan said. “He very much loved his Native American heritage. He invested a lot in that in Oklahoma, and just he was a very generous, giving man.”

Reynolds often had stacks of about 30 baseballs in his house, Peterson said. As a kid, she didn’t know anything different, but she later understood that children mailed baseballs to him in hopes of getting his signature. Peterson said Reynolds autographed each one and sent it back for free. [O’Colly]

• The Big 12 falls from first to fifth in Power 5 rankings in NCAA Tournament first round records. Ames.

• This on Kellen and Kelvin is, somewhat annoyingly, very good.

• OSU takes the first two against Kansas State. They are, at the time of this writing, tied with Baylor atop the Big 12 with a 2-0 conference record.

Fire up the Gap Band! Andrew Navigato with his fourth bomb of the season to lead off B3. ? #GoPokes #okstate pic.twitter.com/IPocmETxoL

— Cowboy Baseball (@OSUBaseball) March 23, 2019

Non-OSU Bullets

• How a Bitcoin evangelist made himself vanish.