Five Thoughts on OSU’s 91-48 Win Over Oral Roberts

BOX SCORE

The Cowboys beat up on an in-state mid-major school and didn’t always look real pretty doing it. But there were several positives to take from this outing and several things that jumped out to me during the extended game.

Brandon Averette is a man

OSU’s backup point guard led the team in minutes, points (a career-high 21), and assists (nine). Averette looks like a different player than he did a year ago both physically and with the ball in his hands. He was aggressive and pushed the ball well in transition and found open teammates.

Averette looked the seasoned vet at 20 years old and found his teammates for nine well-dispersed dimes and zero turnovers. He also added a pair of steals.

Averette was supplanted by graduate transfer Kendall Smith as the starter but he showed that won’t limit his impact on the game.

OSU handled the extended timeout well

With 11:54 left in the game, the scoreboard read OSU 61, ORU 34 — and then it didn’t. It didn’t read anything the rest of the game. For over 15 minutes, the broadcast crew ran out of stories and Allsion Gappa tracked down Bryant Reeves who correctly critiqued the Cowboys first half, talked about family and former teammates and then chuckled at the comparison between his son and James Washington.

When the game finally resumed, no one could see the score or the time or anything. Larry Reece had to call out shot clock updates over the PA system and they were using an air horn to signal timeouts.

The obvious concern here is that a team up big might relax during the down time. Boynton chit-chatted with his players and everyone enjoyed the music, including OSU’s bench and excluding ORU’s.

But the Cowboys handled the interruption well and came right out of the technical delay scoring 17 of the next 19 points and put the Golden Eagles down for good.

Dynamic PG Duo

We’ve talked about Averette’s career night but I really liked seeing he and Kendall Smith on the floor together. They compliment each other well. Averette showed to be the more aggressive but Smith seems to let the game come to him more.

The savvy vet has good size too which allows the duo to get minutes on the defensive end too. Averette can stick his nose in and Smith has the length. They are at least not a liability on that end if used in stretches.

Someone talk me down but I think they might be best-suited to mesh side by side because of their opposing styles and skill sets than any backcourt duo OSU has had in a while. Before you jump down to the comment section, I’m not saying they are the best backcourt duo in a while.

The offense hasn’t quite arrived

The Cowboys had two scoring droughts of over three minutes in the first half and both with at least five-straight missed field goal attempts. Both were the result of OSU getting lazy and settling for too many jump shots early in the shot clock.

Most of the Cowboys’ offensive spurts were due to 12 ORU turnovers which resulted in 14 points. How will they fare against a Texas A&M team that is currently ranked No. 2 in defensive efficiency by KenPom?

At this point, for being down its best two offensive players in Jeffrey Carroll and Davon Dillard, there’s probably not a ton to complain about.

A Family affair

There are several ties between these two schools, the most obvious being the newest member of Mike Boynton’s staff, former Cowboy son Scott Sutton.

Before the game, Bryndon Manzer noted that this was the first scouting report Sutton had done since 19 years ago before he was ORU’s head coach. And it included his nephew, Spencer Sutton (son of Sean) and a bunch of players he just got finished coaching. That has to be the epitome of mixed feelings.

Sean Sutton’s son is guarding Bryant Reeves’ son in Gallagher-Iba Arena. Translation: We are old. #okstate

— Carson Cunningham (@KOCOCarson) November 17, 2017

Eddie was in attendance as well to make three generations of Suttons inside Gallagher-Iba Arena. Pretty cool. I wonder who he was rooting for?

Next up: The Cowboys head to their head coach’s home of Brooklyn to take on an impressive looking Texas A&M team.