The Five Best Stats from Oklahoma State’s 82–64 Win Over Kansas

The Cowboys put on a show inside Gallagher-Iba Arena on Senior Day.

In the first (and only) conference win streak of the season, they earned the program’s first home-and-away sweep over Kansas in 35 years, dealing Bill Self the first winless season against a conference opponent during his 15-year Hall of Fame tenure in Lawrence.

Here are five stats that stuck out to me from the huge Cowboy win.

1:55

That’s the amount of time that Kansas led Oklahoma State — this season. The Cowboys never trailed on Saturday and were only tied with the Jayhawks for a minute and 35 seconds, when it was 0-0.

This game felt a lot like the one in Lawrence in that Oklahoma State started out shooting well but also attacked the glass early and earned those opportunities. Once again, the Cowboy defense was stout enough to limit Kansas’ ability to turn it into a 3-point contest and shoot itself back into the game.

41

One thing both games had in common is that Oklahoma State made the most of its disruptive defense. In Round 1 in Lawrence, the Cowboys scored 20 points of off of just 11 KU turnovers, including 15 off of the first five (insane!).

On Saturday, the Cowboys forced the Jayhawks into 17 turnovers and scored 20 points off of those turns. In all, that’s 41 points off of just 28 KU turnovers. It was a huge part of the game and something OSU used to control — that’s right I said “control” — a normally dominate offensive team throughout.

Kansas forward Svi Mykhailiuk talked about just that after the game.

“They just started really good and they just kept going,” said Mykhailiuk. “We didn’t play very tough today. We turned the ball over a lot at the beginning of the game and they just got a lead and kept it.”

In these two games OSU has scored 24 percent and 26 percent of its points off of TOs, respectively.

50%

This was just the sixth game all season and fourth in Big 12 play that the Cowboys have shot at least 50 percent from the floor. The other three conference games were the home loss to West Virginia, the win in Lawrence and last week’s win over Texas Tech.

The Jayhawks, for example, have hit that mark 11 times and have shot 60 percent or better five times. OSU’s season high was against Mississippi Valley State at 52.5 percent.

And it wasn’t just luck. The Cowboys were hitting good (and open) shots and the not-good ones were a product of Kendall Smith playing really well and manufacturing his own offense. Great game from him on senior night.

8:1

This is a stat that went widely unnoticed, at least by me. But the Cowboys had eight blocks on Saturday to just one from the Jayhawks. Three of those came off of the hand of Cam McGriff.

Oklahoma State posted a block rate of 20 percent to Kansas’ just 3.3 percent. That had a lot to do with limiting the Jayhawks’ efficiency on offense.

23-11

The free throw disparity inside GIA on Saturday was beautifully ironic. Oklahoma State got the Phog Allen treatment, doubling the Jayhawks attempts from the charity stripe.

Bill Self got T’ed up for calmly bringing his concerns to the nearest ref’s attention.

He may have had a point on that phantom 17th charge drawn by Lindy Waters. It led to a huge 3 by the sophomore on the ensuing possession and probably resulted in a 5-point swing.

Aside from that, I didn’t feel like this game was necessarily one-sided from that perspective. Foul count: 20-14 in favor of OSU. But let’s be honest, no one feels sorry for Kansas on that one.