Five Thoughts on Mike Boynton’s Big 12 Media Days Press Conference

Mike Boynton attended his first Big 12 Media Day on Tuesday in Kansas City. Hayden Barber was there for us, and he had a good early post on what Boynton had to say. He also sat down with him for a longer period of time later on and will have more coming later, including some player interviews.

I had thoughts on the performance from Boynton, though. Here are five of them from his first public presser in Kansas City.

1. Playing up Brooklyn and Stillwater

Boynton mentions Brooklyn and Stillwater (or some variation thereof) in nearly every interview he has like this one. I like it. Be who you are is a thing Carson and I have talked about recently as it relates to the Oklahoma State offense in football, and that’s sort of the mantra Boynton is playing up here. I’d imagine it plays well in living rooms.

2. FBI Stock answer

It’s become clear that this is the most we’re going to get out of Boynton regarding the FBI investigation:

“I will tell you just like everybody else in the country, probably in the world, when that headline comes across your phone because I was on the plane that morning, I was shocked.”

That’s not a bad thing, and he doesn’t owe anybody anything more. I don’t really know what I want here. Of course everyone wants answers as quickly as possible, but it’s not as if asking the questions more often will get you any closer to the end of the thing. I would imagine, or I guess I would hope, that the questions die off in the near future and everybody focuses on the hoops. At least I think I hope that.

3. No commitment to style (yet)

Boynton has been coy about what Oklahoma State will do offensively since he took the job. I’m intrigued to see their first few games to see how much of the Brad Underwood spread offense — which I loved — is left over in the Boynton era.

What Boynton hasn’t been shy about is what Oklahoma State is going to be defensively. In his introductory press conference earlier this year, he made it clear he wanted a tough, man-to-man style defense. He talked a little about the effort being put into improving that side of the floor Tuesday.

“… We do that at Oklahoma State by being a really, really good defensive team. It’s been something we have really focused on since I took over late March and it’s something we try to building on every single day, so defense is something we try to focus on.”

Did I see the defense/discipline shorts make a reappearance recently? I think I did.

Just Zack being Zack. #letswork #okstate pic.twitter.com/Mp4BMmCuU1

— Cowboy Basketball (@OSUMBB) October 7, 2017

4. Doesn’t Care About Polls

I half expected him to hold up a printout of the Big 12 preseason coaches poll that has OSU picked 10th of 10 in the Big 12 and say, “Three-fourths of this is inackrut!”

“I haven’t read a single preseason college basketball magazine, probably haven’t done so since I’ve been a coach. I did it when I played because it was something that you enjoyed reading about, maybe hopefully somebody will mention your name.

“I look forward to going to practice every day and trying to make our guys better and going through the process of continuing to implement our system and elevate our program from where it is to where it can hopefully be again, a nationally relevant program.”

I did like the OSU response to this quite a bit.

Motivation. #letswork #okstate pic.twitter.com/ZJfZvcwNxj

— Cowboy Basketball (@OSUMBB) October 19, 2017

That’s good social media-ing. Now hopefully they can back it up.

5. The Big 12 Baptism

It’s going to be real, isn’t it?

“(All the Big 12 coaches have) met a couple times since I took the job, and they’ve all been very helpful in terms of just offering support. But they’re competitors, right? So it’s not like they’re going to give me secrets on how to beat ’em! Those guys are all going to try to teach me lessons as a rookie head coach and I think we will be up to the task from a competitive standpoint.”