Five Thoughts On Oklahoma State’s 102-90 Win Over Central Arkansas

BOX SCORE

Oklahoma State beat Central Arkansas 102-90 on Monday night in Gallagher-Iba Arena to get to 2-0 on the young season. The game was actually in doubt for a while before the Pokes put it away late with a flurry of threes as UCA went cold.

Phil Forte led all scorers with 31 points on 8/14 shooting including 4/10 from 3-point range and 11/11 from the free throw line. Jawun Evans added a tidy 23-5-8-3-1 line and Jeffrey Carroll had his second-straight performance of 20+ points. It wasn’t as pretty as it might look on paper though as the Pokes gave up 90 and allowed UCA to shoot 47 percent from the field.

Five thoughts on Brad Underwood’s 91st win as a college basketball coach.

1. It’s Good for OSU to face some adversity

Underwood said when OSU scrimmaged at Colorado a few weeks ago that he wanted the to put the team through some adversity. They got all they wanted from Central Arkansas on Monday as the Bears actually got within one halfway through the second half.

OSU’s defensive intensity lagged a little bit, and it got absolutely nothing out of its big men (more on that in a minute). In the long run, it’s probably good to have UCA give you a game for two reasons:

1. You stop reading your own headlines on sites like this one
2. You put the work in before you go to Maui and get embarrassed

Forte said it best after the game on Fox Sports.

“To give up 90 points, that’s not our style,” said Forte. “If we play like this next game going against New Orelans, it’ll be a long game. We gotta get better because that wasn’t very good. We didn’t play a full game.”

I agree.

2. Still nothing doing on offense

Sometimes it feels like … these words are going to be tough to type … OSU is scoring in the exact same ways it scored under Travis Ford. It feels like they haven’t completely bought in on offense yet. Underwood was spewing intensity at halftime about lack of ball movement which is interesting because that’s the only thing I saw that looked different from the Ford era.

I think what he means is that OSU still isn’t moving the ball within the structure of his motion offense in a way that is viscerally pleasing to him, and this I would agree with. But an increase in ball movement on the perimeter in general has led to more easy buckets for Jawun and Phil who have both found space to cut into the lane and get shots off.

OSU actually shot 75 percent on non-3s on Monday which is an astonishing number. A lot of that is because Evans is awesome, but he can’t win the Big 12 by himself. They need to buy in quickly on offense. Also, I realize there is a grace period here, but I’d like to at least see them attempt to run the offense (which I haven’t really yet).

3. Phil Forte is really good at college basketball

Forte and Jawun Evans are very different in that you can see Forte playing to the top of his ceiling while you can see how much more Evans could do with more athletic dudes and better shooters around him. Regardless, Forte is a blast to watch. I’m going to go through every small town in Oklahoma this year.

Forte from Del City!

Forte from Kingfisher!

Forte from Cushing!

Forte from Fairview!

The whole world, baby.

Forte with the 25 footer!

Cowboys up 13-4 with 16:25 to go #okstate https://t.co/3GaP49FjU5

— Cowboy Basketball (@OSUMBB) November 15, 2016

4. What’s the plan on defense?

There is a lot going on here. First, OSU’s bigs were not great on Monday. Mitch Solomon, Cam McGriff and Lucas N’Guessan combined for 14 fouls, five boards and two points (and McGriff had both points and four of the rebounds). They got nothing out of them offensively or defensively other than the fouls. It’s going to be really difficult to contend in the Big 12 like that. Crime Dog and Solomon both fouled out.

OSU is going to just be so thin on defense, I’m not sure what the plan will be. Play four guards and McGriff and pray? Put Solomon in a straitjacket? Who knows. But I do love how much they love playing defense. I’d rather see them be elite and passionate on that end than on offense.

They certainly aren’t elite yet — they only had seven steals and forced 15 turnovers overall, but they do get fired up about a big-time stand. At one point in the second half they forced a shot clock violation, and I thought McGriff was going to explode out of his jersey. Giving up 90 to UCA is nothing to be excited about (as Forte said), but you can tell they at least desire it on that end.

5. Jeffrey Carroll is quietly playing very well

How about Carroll coming off the bench to post 42 points and 20 boards in the first two games? He had a number of alley oops on Monday and looked as confident with his stroke and with the ball as I’ve ever seen him. If you can get Leyton Hammonds going a little bit, that Evans-Forte-Carroll-Hammonds-McGriff fivesome could be a lot of fun (more undersized than me at a NFL combine, but still a lot of fun).

ALLEY-OOP ?

Cowboys lead 76-64 with 7:51 on the clock #okstate https://t.co/Y6putaIMUu

— Oklahoma State (@OSUAthletics) November 15, 2016

Conclusion

Brad Underwood played UCA four times while he was at SFA (they shared a conference) and beat them by an average (!) of 28.3 points. This performance wasn’t anywhere close to that, and you know he won’t be happy about it.

OSU has a lot of work to do on offense (run plays) and defense (transition help and some solution on the interior), but they did put up 100+ in back to back games to open the season. I’m confident the issues will be solved, but I’m not as optimistic they will come as quickly as some of us would have liked.

Other notes

• I keep forgetting Shine is on the team. He always surprises me. He had eight points and hit two threes on Monday. I like him.

• Mrs. Pistols during the game: Wait, Phil Forte, didn’t he graduate? Are you sure you’re watching a current game?”

• Cam McGriff guarding point guards and turning around to play the five on defense is everything to me. I am 100 percent in on the Crime Dog.

• Leyton Hammonds suffered a hyperextended knee in the first half in which his knee apparently bent backwards. He writhed and screamed on the floor in a manner that told me he either tore 24 ligaments or is going to get made fun of for the rest of the year by his boys. Fortunately for him, it will be the latter.

• OSU now has 204 points on 35 assists on the year. Weird.

• There were 57 fouls on Monday. Fifty-seven!

• The Yelling Man needs to go.

• Has to sting for Davon Dillard that Tyler Underwood and Will Lienhard played ahead of him.

• Mitch Solomon opening with a quick three in the 2nd half was … interesting.

• Underwood said they were “pounding nails” at halftime. No idea what this means.

• Leyton tried to Fredric Weis a dude like 55 minutes after apparently shredding his knee.

• What if we didn’t have Forte? He and Evans have 110 of OSU’s 204 points so far this year.

Next game: Wednesday against New Orleans