Scheduling Rivals the Importance of Recruiting, Lutz Says

STILLWATER — Sam Houston, the Cowboys’ Tuesday opponent, debuted at No. 79 in the initial NET rankings — that’s ahead of five Big 12 teams.

Now, it might not stay that way for long. The season sample size is relatively small. For example, Northwestern — a team Oklahoma State just beat in Chicago — is listed six spots ahead of the unbeaten Cowboys.

But still, for a game against a Conference USA foe, this could be the slightest of boosts on OSU’s resume should the Pokes take care of business Tuesday night.

Scheduling is an ever-evolving art in college basketball with different metrics gaining and losing gravity when it comes to the NCAA Tournament selection process over the years. There has always been a little bit of projecting going on as to how teams will finish the year when adding them to the schedule, but with the increased use of the transfer portal, those projections gets even tougher.

“For instance, when we scheduled the Sam Houston game, we knew that they were gonna basically lose the majority of their team, but at the same time, their coaching staff, their culture, the success they’ve had since Coach (Chris) Mudge has taken over and even before when Coach (Jason) Hooten was there, they’ve always had a really strong program,” OSU associate head coach Janes Miller said. “So, we didn’t necessarily know who they were gonna have or who we’d be playing against on Dec. 2, but we knew they were probably be a successful program and they were gonna be tough. They’re gonna win a lot of league games when they get into league play.

“Part of that is the balance of understanding who their coach is, what success they’ve had over the course of recent memory, and then at the same time, not playing an opponent that just wouldn’t make sense from a numbers standpoint in trying to position ourselves the best we can to get an at-large bid when it comes to mid-March.”

Sam Houston brought almost an entirely new roster into the 2025-26 season. The Bearkats’ top nine scorers from last season’s squad (that went 13-19) are gone, and in their places, Sam Houston has seven guys who are averaging 8.9 points a game or better.

OSU coach Steve Lutz said scheduling OSU had to be interesting for other teams because the Cowboys are in a similar boat. Only three guys returned from last season’s team that went to the NIT, and only one of those guys (Robert Jennings II) played regularly.

Lutz and Miller on Monday each compared the importance of scheduling with the importance of recruiting.

“Like with most things with me, I just work extremely hard at it and do the best that we can,” Lutz said. “Recruiting is number one — it’s 1A — and scheduling is 1B. And those two things by in large are gonna determine the lion share of your success. We take it extremely seriously, and we put a lot of time and effort into it.”

The Bearkats’ only losses this year came against Big 12 squads, dropping a game to Tech 98-77 and a game to Utah 85-79. KenPom (which again, probably needs more data points this early in the year) gives Sam Houston above a 50% chance of winning 16 of its 20 Conference USA games a year removed from the Bearkats going 6-12 in C-USA play.

OSU’s Big 12 results will ultimately carry the most weight when it comes to the Cowboys’ NCAA Tournament standing at the end of the season, but Tuesday’s game could provide more value than it might initially seem.

“Coach and I talk about scheduling quite a bit just because it’s so important to get to where we want to go,” Miller said. “There’s a fine line about playing too hard of a schedule, where are we at in the progression of the program, who do we have coming back, who do we have coming in. It’s a little bit of a coin flip at times because you’re banking on certain teams to be good, and then sometimes they don’t pan out the way you expect them to be. But we wanted to try to get five or six really good opportunities and then play some good lower-level opponents at home. I think so far it’s worked out that way.

“Hopefully we continue to have some success, and then we need those teams to continue to win some games as they get into their league. Scheduling is talked about almost as frequently as recruiting around here.”