Oklahoma State Wearing Out Defensively as Season, NCAA Tournament Slip Away

Don’t look at the offensive end of the floor. Trust me, do not look at the offensive end of the floor. Rather, it’s the defensive side that will tell you all you need to know about this year’s Oklahoma State basketball team 14 games into the Big 12 season.

Once thought to be a defensive stalwart at best and a nuisance at worse, OSU has been a porous five-man unit over the past month. A thing that exists on the floor for other teams to easily expose en route to victory after victory.

At times, little more than air.

According to KenPom, Oklahoma State is ranked No. 79 in offensive efficiency, scoring 110 points per 100 possessions or 1.1 points per possession. On defense, they’re No. 81, giving up 1.0 points per possession or 100 per 100 possessions.

On Saturday against TCU, that number was much higher. The Pokes gave up 1.29 per possession, which is the highest mark they’ve allowed since allowing 1.27 to OU in Norman way back in January when OU was actually good.

That OU game was an outlier at the beginning of the season, though. It marked the only time in the first nine games of Big 12 play that teams shot better than 50 percent from the field against the Pokes. It’s gone sideways in a hurry, though, especially in February.

In fact, here are your Big 12 splits for OSU on defense.

First 9 games: 43 percent given up
Next 6 games: 53 percent given up

In that same span of time, OSU’s offensive numbers have gone from 44 percent shooting to 42 percent. A drop, to be sure, but not a precipitous one like we’ve seen on the defensive end.

This could be attributed to any number of things. Teams could be figuring OSU out on the second run through the conference. OSU’s 7.5-man rotation could be wearing down as a grueling Big 12 slate comes to a close. It might be the case that they were just never that good defensively. Who knows.

But the result is that OSU has lost six of eight (with two bizarre wins at Kansas and West Virginia) and now sits in 9th place in the Big 12, one game out of where the Pokes were picked in the preseason — last.

Mike Boynton on the NCAA Tournament: "If we can figure out how to build a little bit of consistency, sure, I think we can, but right now, we better worry about Texas Tech on Wednesday ’cause if we don’t take care of that, none of the rest of it matters."

— Nathan Ruiz (@NathanSRuiz) February 18, 2018

“When they made their run, we stayed close for a little while. Coming out of halftime, we didn’t compete at the level we needed to on the glass and certainly defensively to have success against a really good team on the road,” said Boynton of the TCU game on Saturday as the Frogs shot 54 percent from the field — the fourth game in a row OSU has given up a number over 50 percent.

The frustrating part is that it seems a lot of the issues on defense have been effort. OSU gave up innumerable open layups and dunks to Kansas State on Wednesday and looked on Saturday to either not have the athletes to roll with TCU’s offense or the desire to really disrupt anything other than their path to the NCAA Tournament.

“I’ve got to do better at helping them understand that every night is a battle,” he added. “Like, a true grind. Regardless of how you do in the last game, you have to be able to bring that same mindset to the next one. Obviously we have not done that. It’s on me to get it corrected.

“We have to get back to being a competitive team that fights for 40 minutes that we have been from time to time this year in league play.”

Better hurry. Time is running out.