OSU and Houston Agree to Home-and-Home Series Beginning in 2018

Oklahoma State was a quality win (or two) away from punching its ticket to the NCAA Tournament in Mike Boynton’s first season as head coach.

A year older and a lot wiser, the second year man is building out his teams non-conference schedule keeping in mind that a lacking non-con slate hurt the Cowboys’ overall tourney resume last season. He’s aiming for that not to be a repeat occurrence by scheduling Houston, a quality AAC opponent, for a home-and-home series beginning in 2018 according to an announcement by OSU on Tuesday.

The first game of the series will tip on Dec. 8 inside GIA and the Cowboys will make a trip to Houston at some point to be determined at a later date in the 2019-20 season.

? Schedule Alert! ?

The Cowboys and @UHCougarMBK have agreed to a home-and-home series that begins with a Dec. 8 showdown in GIA. #letswork #okstate

➡️ https://t.co/Uwyq0u2SkU pic.twitter.com/bRgijNIhbC

— Cowboy Basketball (@OSUMBB) June 5, 2018

Houston advanced to the Round of 32 of the NCAA Tournament last season and finished 27-8 overall, the highest win total for Kelvin Sampson since he took over the Cougars program in 2014. Houston finished 18th at KenPom, which pegged its overall strength of schedule as top-100 nationally.

Houston’s non-conference strength of schedule, however, was 254th nationally. Factoring that and OSU’s putrid 311th out of 351 non-conference strength of schedule in, this series makes sense for both teams looking to improve the quality of opponents on their schedule as each looks to make a run at the Big Dance.

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