Hoops Notebook: Likekele Progressing, Crazy Technology and Skydiving

Oklahoma State’s men’s basketball team had its first official practice of the fall Monday.

Before practice, the team held it’s first media availability of the school year, where Mike Boynton, Cameron McGriff and Lindy Waters spoke with the media. Here are some notes from Monday.

Likekele Progressing

Before Monday’s practice, Thomas Dziagwa and Isaac Likekele were getting shots up. The pair would each make 10 at one spot before moving to another.

As expected Dziagwa probably did a bit better, but Likekele, a freshman, was hanging in there.

“I’ll say this without hesitation, he’s been the most impressive of our freshmen in terms of making the transition,” Boynton said. “He’s going to be a really, really, really good player. But part of it is, A: he’s really competitive. He was a highly competitive kid in high school. He wants to win. He’s been a state champion before, but more importantly he has a tremendous work ethic.”

Junior forward Cameron McGriff called Likekele the most vocal of the team’s newcomers, and Lindy Waters said it seems like Likekele isn’t a step behind despite being a freshman.

Likekele wasn’t highly recruited. Out of Mansfield Timberview, he was a three-star prospect with offers from OSU, Fresno State, Cal Poly and Central Michigan.

“I think he has a little bit of a chip on his shoulder, but not arrogant about it,” Boynton said. “He’s not disrespectful in that way, but he knows that people have kind of overlooked him for a good part of his life and now he has an opportunity to show what he really believes he’s capable of. We do a shooting chart every week and there’s been multiple weeks since June that he’s been the leading shot taker each week. Not surprised that he’s continued to improve just because of the work he’s put in.”

Charging Basketballs

The OSU basketball team has a rack of balls that need to charge like a cell phone or a laptop.

The balls are equipped with a program that tracks the players’ shots. It can tell them where on the court their shot is struggling and where they are doing well.

“A lot of times, you talk pretty generically about how you should work, things you should improve on,” OSU coach Mike Boynton said. “Now, we have a system where we can measure those things for them, and they can for themselves see, ‘Well, I’ve been struggling in the left corner, or I’ve been really good at the top of the key. Here are some indicators of how I stay away from the corner shots or improve ’em, or how I get more opportunities,’ and that’ll go into effect as well as we start to prepare for opponents, figuring out where guys are having the most success, so it gives you a true measuring point, if you will, on who’s good where and which groups work best together. We’ll use it for practice every day, and I’ll go back and be able to kinda do an analysis on what the practice was like based on what the shot charts tells us.”

Here’s a look at the charging rack:

For it to work, the players have to wear a chip on their shoes. For now, it only works in the practice gym.

Boynton said the team hasn’t had much opportunity to reap the benefits of the new technology, but with the team’s fall practice starting Monday, it’s only a matter of time.

“It’s a kind of work in progress,” Boynton said. “There’s not a ton we can do with them in the summer when they’re on their own, so now, we can get our hands on them a little bit more now that practice is officially here. We used it this summer, but it was just being installed, so we don’t have a whole lot of usage out of it yet, but we’ll get enough.”

Boynton Talks Skydiving

If you haven’t heard, Boynton jumped out of a plane a few weeks ago.

Here’s the video OSU Athletics put together of the jump:

You don't say "no" when the @GoArmy Golden Knights ask you to jump out of their airplane. #meetyourarmy #c2e pic.twitter.com/E8hJANn3U2

— Cowboy Basketball (@OSUMBB) September 21, 2018

Before OSU started practice Monday, Boynton gave some gem quotes on his experience.

“I think at some point I just said, ‘You know what, I’m up here. There’s no way I’m going to back out,'” Boynton said. “That would be the most cowardly thing I’ve ever done, is take me back down on the plane.

“The guy I was jumping with had over 9,000 jumps. So if you’re going to do this, I’ll call him, you guys should go with him because I would think that’s as comforting as it would get, and if it was going to go wrong, it was just my day to go.”

During his interview, Waters said he wanted to skydive. Boynton’s response:

“He can’t do it, yet.”