Reader Thoughts: Is Mike Boynton a Good Coach?

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Member Charlie Kominski made a post Wednesday that might be one of the better things written on Oklahoma State’s basketball season to this point. Rather than just providing a take (which can still be fun), Charlie dove deep with some statistical analysis on and posed the question “Is Mike Boynton a good coach?” Here is Charlie’s post in full, and I’ll give my thoughts at the end.

Is Mike Boynton a Good Coach?

Since I am on vacation, I decided to do some digging into what kind of coach Mike Boynton is and the direction of OSU. For this analysis, I am looking at 2020 Big 12 as a whole, the past decade of OSU basketball, Big 12 coaching salaries and where to improve upon this season.

Criteria

Bad Coach: A coach who cannot improve a team no matter the talent level or experience.

Neutral Coach: A coach who goes the way of his players. If the talent and experience is there, then the team will have a good season. Average recruiter and pretty much just all-around average. These make up the majority of Division I coaches because this isn’t little league and not everyone gets a trophy.

Good Coach: Above average at something (recruiting, development, Xs and Os, etc.) and at least average in the other categories. This coach will have more success with building a team compared to a bad or neutral coach. Most Power Five coaches.

Great Coach: These are the guys you try and hire every time an opening comes up. Above average in several categories and consistently get more out of their team than would normally be expected. The guy you always say we should hired.

Elite Coach: They have awards named after them. Probably only one to four of them at any given time, but some OSU fan somewhere thinks we could still get them.

Overview

Boynton’s tenure at OSU has been nothing short of a rollercoaster. First-time head coach who immediately gets hammered by the NCAA, sweeping Kansas, expelled players, surprise top-10 wins — you name it, we have probably seen it under Boynton (unless you name an NCAA tournament appearance).

My first inclination is to say that Boynton is in the good coach category. We have been getting better at recruiting, and Boynton wins more than he probably is expected to with the talent on the roster and while facing Big 12 coaches, the majority of whom are great coaches. The Big 12 attracts coaching talent due in no small part to the lucrative deals some of these coaches are getting. Seventy percent of the conference has a coach who is being paid as a top-25 coach, and 90% of the conference is a top-50 paid coach.

To the surprise of no one, Boynton is the lowest-paid coach in the Big 12. In fact if you polled every OSU fan where he should rank, I bet he would still come in ninth or 10th. Despite being paid 10th in the league, he has finishes of sixth, ninth, and seventh during his tenure. This alone will probably keep him at OSU for the foreseeable future.

In the spirit of fairness, I can’t just get on a soapbox and end this here and say that since he is cheap and a nice guy we should keep him in perpetuity, so here are some mitigating and aggravating factors for him as a coach:

Mitigating:

• Immediately lost a recruiting class due to sanctions out of his control
• Inherited players who were on the lower end of the recruiting spectrum
• Forced to play young players against much better talent due to lack of depth
• Some of the players dismissed were not recruited by him/had been on campus for awhile without needing to be dismissed before his tenure
• Illness and injury during last season’s campaign

Aggravating:

• Teams always hit a wall to start conference play
• Several players dismissed were his recruits
• Several years of at least one player being dismissed/transferring
• Baffling lineups that hurt overall performance

2020 Big 12 Picture

Like clockwork, OSU has started off winless in conference play. This yearly ritual always brings out the hottest takes and continues the hope-hopelessness trend experienced during football season. We are truly all gluttons for punishment. This year the Big 12 already has 50% of its teams in the top 15 and looks to be an even bigger juggernaut than in years past. So, how does OSU get to where it wants to be? In my mind the two most important factors to succeeding in any Division-I sport are recruiting more talented players and having more experience on your team.

From basketballreference.com, I compiled a list of how experienced each Big 12 team is this year, what their roster makeup looks like and how well they recruit. Experience is defined as the weighted average of the minutes played by the team, % Upperclassmen is just each roster sorted by class (this does include walk-ons and is not weighted by time spent on the court), and Top 100 Recruits is exactly what is says.

… Yeah, not great Bob. Due to two large classes in a row, OSU has a very inexperienced team with hardly any older players to help lead the way. It also gets worse (or better if you are more forward thinking), all three of OSU’s top 100 recruits are freshmen. So when compared to teams like Baylor, Kansas or Texas, who all can recruit well and keep their talent, OSU is falling short.

Now, while this does not bode well for the rest of the season, the Texas game should provide some glimmer of hope that we are able to compete away from home with basically the college version of the team you would build on 2K. Obviously the season will play out and we will get a better understanding of who the team is going forward, but for right now I will say that it’s tough for me to get mad at Boynton for this. It’s not like he can convince players on the other team to leave. We are improving in recruiting and if that continues, we should have the talent base to contend in the Big 12 in the near future.

Impact on Boynton’s Coaching Evaluation: Neutral

2010s: I Guess They Were Alright

OSU used to be an elite basketball school. But ever since The Scowl has left, the team has seemed aimless, drifting and waiting for the right coach to bring back a winning culture. Maybe Mike can’t make the dent this year, but is he trending in the right direction? The Big 12 may be great now but several of the teams will be losing talent over the next few years and with the fate of Kansas up in the air, it is imperative that Mike strikes when he has the chance. So let’s take a look and see if we think that Mike is trending in the right direction:

While looking at the past decade, the word that comes to mind when talking about OSU basketball is “average.” There have been a few great years with the Marcus Smart and Jawun Evans years, but OSU has never been able to get its recruiting to a level that lets us build on those successes. Our best seasons unsurprisingly come from having experience and/or NBA talent on the roster. Looking at the Boynton tenure, the only thing that is definitively improving is recruiting. The talent level that OSU was bringing in year after year before Boynton got here was not ever going to bring a Big 12 title to Stillwater, let alone compete for a top-three spot consistently.

Last year was probably one of the most disappointing seasons I have seen, however, looking at it holistically the season actually turned out better than it should have:

• Lost ICE for several games due to illness (probably only played half of the season at 90% health or better)
• Lindy gets plantar fasciitis in both feet (ouch)
• Dizzy gets the flu (If arrows stopped a virus Dizzy could have stopped COVID alone)
• 3-point line moved back by 16.75″
• 14th ranked SOS (meat meet grinder)
• Eight-game losing streak to start off conference play

If I had told myself everything that we would have to deal with, I would have been surprised that we somehow finished over .500 and somehow won eight total conference games. So knowing all of that, I will say that I believe OSU is heading in the right direction, but that means expectations should continue to grow as well.

Impact on Boynton’s Coaching Evaluation: Slight Positive

Where Do We Go From Here?

In order to make sure this season is not a total disaster, Boynton will probably need to make some changes to the lineup. Using the eyeball test, it is clear that Flavors and Kouma shouldn’t be taking minutes away from Bryce, Rondel, and Kalib …yet here we are. Boynton mentioned that Kouma does things that stats don’t catch, and I am sure Flavors hates missing shots as much as I hate watching him take those shots. But it is the coach’s job to maximize the team and come up with a game plan to win. From Basketball Reference, I compiled some of the important stats for each player to see if Mike has it right with his lineups.

DRtg is a measure of how many points an opposing team would score in 100 possessions with Player X on the court. This is like golf where lower is better. Bryce, Avery and the Boones are the best defenders on the team.

ORtg is a measure for how many points the team would expect to score in 100 possessions with Player X on the court. ICE, Rondel and Cade are the three best offensive players on our team.

Box Plus Minus Marshall’s (it’s true) favorite stat gives the +/- for a player on both the offensive and defensive side of the ball. This is another measurement for seeing if someone is actually a net contributor to the team. I know some people called for Avery to start over ICE, but Likekele’s efficiency from the offensive end and what he brings to the table in every other category should keep him in the starting role.

I had to leave out Chris Harris and Donovan Williams from a lot of these averages because their minutes skew the data. The most important takeaway from these stats are that your eyes were not deceiving you! Flavors and Kouma being on the court hurt the team by a lot, and unless Flavors is hitting shots (which he isn’t), he should be the ninth option. And Kouma may be great at setting screens, but he is not a great defender and playing four on five on the offensive end doesn’t help no matter how beautiful those screens are. Here are some other takeaways:

• Bryce is good
• ICE is good
• MAM is good
• Cade is good
• Keylan is good

If only there was some way to get all of them on the court from the beginning of a game and play them the most minutes due to their combination of abilities and positional flexibility … oh well, too bad that’s apparently impossible. I think everyone who watches the games has pretty much seen who should be in the starting lineup without actually digging into any of the stats. So if the eyes aren’t lying and the stats are confirming what the eyes are seeing, what is taking Boynton so long?

The stats also show who should be coming off of the bench: Avery, Rondel and Kalib. In fact, I would be interested to see a game where only those eight players see the court for the majority of the minutes. If I was a betting man, I think the defensive lapses would be mitigated and that the offense would actually look better. I just don’t want us to take another six to eight games to realize what should have been obvious after four or five games. This is the most disappointing aspect of Boynton’s coaching career, not settling into a rotation quickly and not being able to identify the hot hand until its too late (remember Kendall Smith got benched for Brandon Averette and stayed on the bench way too long even when he started cooking, can’t have that happen).

Impact on Boynton’s Coaching Evaluation: Negative

Conclusion

I started out believing Boynton was a good coach, and I still think that (or at least I don’t think he is a bad coach). He has improved recruiting and was dealt a bad hand to start, but the next few years are going to determine if he can go from good-to-great or if he is destined for good-to-neutral. He does need to find his best players easier if he wants to have any continued success.

Marshall’s Thoughts

Again, what excellent work from Charlie. That’s better than anything we’ve put on the site all week.

I agree with a lot of what he said in part because it’s hard not to. It’s statistically backed. Stats can provide a bit of revisionist history, though. Flavors, for example, hit 44% of his 3s last season. How was Boynton supposed to know Flavors would start the year cold?

When Boynton mentioned he could do some tinkering with the starting lineup ahead of the Wichita State game, I was expecting a Bryce Williams for Ferron Flavors switch, not a Bernard Kouma for Kalib Boone.

Boynton has been a great/elite recruiter in his tenure. I’ve also hollered from the mountaintops that his baseline inbound plays prove how good a coach he can become.

The sample size this year in terms of lineups is probably still too small. This is probably an overreaction to two conference losses (that were by 4 combined points). But it feels like an area the 38-year-old Boynton can grow.

As for now, I say Boynton is a good coach with the potential of being great (and maybe even elite).