Hoops Notebook: Lutz on His Roster, Lefties and Competition in the Frontcourt

STILLWATER — The early preparations of Year 2 of the Steve Lutz era have started.

With summer here, Oklahoma State has started individual workouts with a team that will be almost entirely different from last season’s squad, as Robert Jennings II and Andrija Vukovic are the only scholarship players returning.

Lutz met with reporters on Tuesday in Gallagher-Iba Arena to give updates on the squad. Here are three things that stood out.

‘Our Bottom Line Is Not to Go to the NIT’

Arturo Dean was Oklahoma State’s first portal addition last offseason. He pledged to the Cowboys on April 24, 2024.

By this April 24, the Cowboys already had five guys committed out of the portal. Lutz wasn’t hired as OSU’s coach until April 1 last year, meaning he had a late start on recruiting the portal. Here’s what he said the difference was between last year and this year with that extra time.

“I’d like to think that we took less risks and we were more diligent and we had more time to investigate and we had more time to vet who we are and were recruiting,” Lutz said. “I think that that’s gonna pay dividends down the road. I think that we’ve got a good group. And that’s not to say that last year’s group wasn’t a good group. I think that they gave us everything that they had. I thought that they played the right way, and they represented Oklahoma State well.

“But our bottom line is not to go to the NIT. Our bottom line is to go to the NCAA Tournament. That’s what I was hired for, and that’s what the administration, and the boosters, and the fans, and the university expects. We had a much longer process of investigating and vetting players that fit our system and fit our program and fit our culture, and I think that that will certainly prove at the end of the year to have value.”

Influx of Lefties

A peculiar aspect to the team Lutz has assembled is that there are a good amount of lefties.

Among incoming portal players, Jaylen Curry (UMass), Kanye Clary (Mississippi State) and Anthony Roy (Green Bay) all shoot with their left hands. It can be an advantage to be a lefty, as most defenders are used to guarding dribble moves and contesting jump shots of right-handers, but Lutz said it wasn’t a point of emphasis in recruiting. It just played out that way.

“It’s crazy — I had the same thing at Western Kentucky,” Lutz said. “Like, I’d be in timeouts and I’d draw up the play, and then I’d go, ‘Oh, shoot. Let’s flip it,’ and we gotta bring them off to their left hand. It took me half a season to figure it out. It just worked out that way. It just worked out that way. It’s not that we went into it and said, ‘Hey, we want four left-handers.’ We went into it saying we wanted great people and some more scoring and some toughness and all those sorts of things.”

Funnily enough, Greek forward Lefteris Mantzoukas is nicknamed “Lefty,” but he is right-handed.

Competition in the Paint

Abou Ousmane was a rock for the Pokes down low last season, and it sounds like the void he left will be hotly contested.

OSU has five players listed at 6-foot-9 or taller on its updated roster in the aforementioned Mantzoukas (who isn’t on campus yet), Oregon State transfer Parsa Fallah, returner Andrija Vukovic, and freshmen Ben Ahmed and Mekhi Ragland.

Vukovic played just 47 total minutes as a freshman last season, scoring 20 points and bringing down eight rebounds, but he got to campus late and dealt with a back injury, which put him behind in 8-ball when it comes to conditioning. Lutz said with the year of college basketball in his system, Vukovic is “lightyears” ahead of the freshmen in these early individual workouts, but Lutz also said the talent his freshmen bigs have is evident.

“I’m telling ya, I really think that there’s gonna be a lot of competition along that front line,” Lutz said. “I really do because those two freshman, man, they don’t know what they’re doing yet, but there’s a lot of talent and a lot of ability. Then like you say, Mili (Vukovic) is coming back for his second year, so he’s lightyears ahead of where he was last year.”