Does Oklahoma State Have the Luxury of Using Redshirts Again?

It’s been a while since an Oklahoma State men’s basketball player took a redshirt.

Michael Weathers and Curtis Jones each sat a year after transferring into Stillwater, and Tavarius Shine was granted a medical redshirt after missing most of the 2016-17 season with an injury. But the last person to take a traditional redshirt was Jeffrey Carroll back in 2013-14. It worked out for Carroll, who averaged 16.4 points a game in his last two season on campus. He played a year with the Lakers’ G League affiliate before furthering his professional career in Italy.

OSU hasn’t been in much of a position to sit players for a whole seasons in recent years. In the transitions between Travis Ford to Brad Underwood and then Underwood to Mike Boynton, high roster turnover had become the norm the past few years in Stillwater, but with year four ahead of Mike Boynton, things might finally be leveling out.

The Cowboys might have as good a roster as they’ve had since that 2013-14 team next season. OSU will have the projected No. 1 NBA draft pick Cade Cunningham running the show alongside fellow future pro Isaac Likekele in the backcourt. Down low, the Pokes will have a junior Yor Anei, who stuffed 145 shots and shot 54.5 percent from the field in his first two seasons.

OSU’s soon-to-be sophomore class showed some promise in its first season on campus, particularly Kalib Boone, who’s per 40 minute averages are 16.2 points, 10.4 rebounds and 2.5 blocks.

With the addition of graduate transfer Ferron Flavors Jr., who announced his commitment to OSU on Monday, OSU also has a lot of other pieces, including its top-10 recruiting class.

Here is a look at what OSU’s roster will look like next season. Keep in mind, Boynton still has a scholarship to give in this cycle with likely suitors being JT Thor or Donovan Williams.

I’m not in any position to suggest which player or players should or shouldn’t redshirt, but I will say, there could be a possibility to use one or two should Boynton and his staff deem necessary.

Redshirting in basketball is a little different than redshirting in football. There can be up to 85 scholarship players on a football roster but only 13 on a basketball roster. It could be a pride thing for one player to have to sit and redshirt while watching all of his other teammates play twice a week. It’s something I talked with Carroll about last week.

“I tell people to this day, I think (taking a redshirt) was the best basketball move I probably could’ve made in my career,” Carroll told PFB. “It was a lot of things that went into that, a lot of emotion, a lot of thought that went into it because I didn’t want to get redshirted. It was kinda brought upon me by Travis Ford. He kept it real with me, something that Travis Ford did with me since Day 1 was be real. That’s something that I love about him.

“But pretty much, he brought me in and sat me down. This is the year we got Marcus Smart, Le’Bryan Nash, Brian Williams, Markell Brown, Phil Forte. This is whenever Phil Forte was the six man, so what does that tell a freshman, a guy who’s coming in, a three-star at that: pretty much that you’re not gonna play too much. He kept it real and just told me I probably wouldn’t play a bunch. I had to go process it.”

Given that OSU uses its final remaining scholarship on a player such as Thor and Williams in this cycle, redshirting a player could also provide OSU a little more roster flexibility moving forward. This is a way early projection, but it looks as if OSU will just have two scholarships available for the 2021 recruiting cycle: Cunningham’s and Flavors’.

If OSU redshirted a player, it would be like adding a third body into that 2021 class, a body that has had a year with OSU’s strength staff and been in all the practices from the previous season.

“At first, I didn’t like the move to do that because you’re in high school, you’re coming out of a really good senior year and summer ball as well, and you go into a place where you obviously want to hit the ground running,” Carroll said. “Trusting the process, it sounds unoriginal, but that was something that I had to do in that time and moment and just put my pride to the side and just have to just really focus on the bigger picture, which was get better, get bigger. I don’t think that I was ready physically to play, either. I had a hard time remembering the plays. It was just a little bit of everything, just the freshmen nerves.”

“I think redshirting was probably the best thing I did because I put on like 15 pounds on muscle. So, my body changed and that changed my game to where I was more of a threat off the dribble, I could attack the basket and just add different stuff to my game. I think that was the best move that I could’ve made. It ended up working out. I had a pretty successful career in college, and I’m trying to have the same in pro life.”