The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly: Where OSU Stands Heading into Big 12 Play

The Cowboys have wrapped up the early portion of their non-conference schedule (they still have Arkansas in the Big 12/SEC Challenge in late January).

When last we did a deep dive into Oklahoma State’s stats after the first six games of the season, the Cowboys were good at defending the three, had a bad starting five, and were awful shooting from beyond the arc. Some things have changed for the better, others for the worse as we head into Big 12 play this Friday.

The Good

There are two things to be really excited about with this Oklahoma State team heading into league play.

First, Mike Boynton has said since his introduction as head coach, that this team would be founded on defense. So far, so good. They rank in the top 55 in four big defensive statistics:

Speaking of turnovers, they went on a RUN the last couple weeks forcing a combined 101 in the past five games. That includes forcing Florida State into a season high 22 in the Cowboys big upset win.

The other big news comes on the other end of the court. OSU has the second best free-throw shooting percentage in the nation.

Through 12 games they’re hitting 80.5% of their free-throw attempts. There is only one player currently on the team shooting worse than 75% with N’Guessan at 66%.

That’s going to help OSU pull off at least one if not a couple of wins in Big 12 play.

The Bad

OSU is not a good rebounding team. We all predicted as much heading into the season, what with OSU’s lack of talent and depth inside. But at this point in the season, it’s worse than I thought it would be.

• Defensive Rebounds per game: 26.25 (Ranks No. 147)
• Rebounding Margin: 3.4 (Ranks No. 112)

To be honest, those numbers are better because of the competition. Against OSU’s three ranked opponents, OSU was out-rebounded in every game.

• Texas A&M 45-38
• Wichita State 36-26
• Florida State 41-37

Granted, both Texas A&M and Wichita State are in the Top-10 in rebounds-per game. But, OSU still has three more Top-50 rebounding teams on the schedule, and will have to face both twice:

• West Virginia No. 17
• Baylor No. 35
• Oklahoma No. 39

On the plus side, thank goodness for Mitchell Solomon. He not only leads the team with 6.7 rebounds per game, he’s grabbing 3.25 offensive rebounds per-game, which ranks 32nd in the nation. But, when Jeffrey Carroll is second on the team in rebounds per game at 6.2, there’s a problem.

The Ugly

You won’t be surprised to know that OSU is bad at shooting the three. The Pokes are currently hitting 33% from beyond the arc, good for 259th in the county.

On the plus side, OSU’s shooting percentage as a team is up .5% from our last check. Plus, that rise comes with Dziagwa’s percentage dropping from 55.6% to 40.6%. So as a team, the other Cowboys are getting better.

The problem is that the three-point shot is a big part of OSU’s offense. 43% of OSU’s 756 shot attempts this season have come from beyond the arc.

Considering how poor they are at hitting bombs, they should probably attempt fewer.

By the way, teams that shoot a lot of threes, tend to not get to the free throw line very often. That’s the case for OSU, who ranks 270th in free-throw attempts. They’ve shot only 215 free throws this season, or about 18 a game. So while OSU is hitting their free-throws, they’re not shooting them enough. This is an example of OSU needing to figure out how to play to their strength and getting to the line more often and settling for threes less. Here’s hoping they’ll figure out how.