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Hoops Notebook: Boone on Bouncing Back, Quick Turnarounds and Senior Day

Five seniors will have decisions to make after this season.

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[Devin Wilber/PFB]

STILLWATER — The Cowboys’ five-game winning streak from a few weeks ago has turned into a three-game losing streak, so the Pokes are in need of a get-right game to help their NCAA Tournament chances.

Oklahoma State hosts Kansas State at 1 p.m. Saturday in Gallagher-Iba Arena. Mike Boynton and his seniors met with reporters Thursday to preview the game. Here are three things that stood out.

Kalib Boone

The Cowboys’ past two games haven’t gone well, and it’s probably no coincidence that Kalib Boone’s past two games have also not gone well.

Dealing with foul trouble, Boone played only 15 combined minutes against TCU and West Virginia, scoring seven total points and not grabbing a rebound in either game.

Boynton pointed to the competition as to a reason why Boone struggled in that three-day stretch. TCU center Eddie Lampkin is listed at 6-foot-11, 263 pounds. WVU center Jimmy Bell is listed at 6-10, 285 pounds. Boone is listed at 6-9, 198 pounds. Boone has added to his frame over recent seasons, but dealing with physically-imposing bigs has always been a tough task for him.

Boynton said he doesn’t want to draw too much attention to Boone’s early foul troubles because he needs his center to stay aggressive, but he also knows he needs Boone on the floor.

“One thing I feel like I need to work on is obviously not picking up two fouls before the first media timeout,” Boone said. “That hurts my team, and that throws everything off for everybody else. That’s the ownership that we all talked about. I can’t do that because that hurts my team. That’s what I can’t do, and I gotta fix that.”

The Double-Whammy of a Quick Turnaround

TCU drummed the Cowboys last Saturday in Fort Worth, but Boynton and Co. had little time for correction because not long after the buzzer sounded on that 100-75 loss, the Pokes were on a plane and on the floor in Morgantown.

OSU got drummed again.

“You don’t even really have a chance to dissect what went wrong,” Boynton said. “You kinda have to, not say ‘Forget about it. Burn the tape,’ but you’re not gonna play [TCU] again over the next couple games. So, you don’t really want to dwell on that, and the task in front of you, you gotta get ready for the next one. It’s a 36-hour turnaround.

“Yeah, that makes it hard because there are things that I knew we needed to practice on Sunday. We couldn’t because it doesn’t help you Monday. It’s part of the deal. Everybody does it, though, so it’s not a complaint. It’s just a reality of having a Saturday-Monday.”

The flip side of playing on Monday, though, is that the Cowboys did have had an extra day or two to prepare for Kansas State on Saturday. So, we’ll see what difference against the Wildcats.

Senior Day

Oklahoma State will honor seven seniors ahead of Saturday’s tip, but among Avery Anderson, Chris Harris, Caleb Asberry, Kalib Boone, Tyreek Smith, Bernard Kouma and John-Michael Wright, only Asberry and Kouma will have exhausted their eligibility after this season.

So five Cowboys will have a decision to make after this year as to whether they want to play another year (or two in the cases of Harris and Smith) of college basketball or move on with their lives. All of them said Thursday something along the lines of they haven’t made a decision and that they are focusing on this season.

“I’m stuck in a moment right now, just being here for my senior year,” Wright said. “Wanting to finish strong for the season is really my main priority. I know I do have a year left, so I’m thankful to be able to have the opportunity to come back. But right now I’m just focused on getting it done here and finishing strong and doing the best we can for this season.”

Division-I basketball teams have 13 available scholarship spots. If every non-senior on OSU’s squad came back next season plus the five committed players in Boynton’s 2023 recruiting class, OSU would have four scholarships available. But with the transfer portal and the potential of players pursuing pro careers, it’s rarely that black and white. OSU also has to relinquish one more scholarship across the next two seasons after the NCAA sanctions placed on the program following the FBI’s probe into college basketball.

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