Cowgirls target host berth
Oklahoma State could earn a host berth in the opening rounds of the NCAA Tournament if it finishes the season strong.
STILLWATER — The Oklahoma State basketball team talks about the NCAA Tournament almost every day.
A coach, a player, sometimes even a manager will bring up the prize at the end of every college basketball season. For the Cowboys, those conversations often come in the form of questions.
“How bad do we want it?” guard Lindy Waters said last week. “What kind of team do we want to be? Do we want to be a team that leaves a legacy that goes to back-to-back NCAA Tournaments? Or not?”
Questions define the Cowboys’ postseason outlook as they head to Fort Worth, Texas, to face TCU in a matchup of teams on the tournament’s bubble. In its past five games, OSU has alternated lackluster home losses to unranked teams with motivated road victories against top20 opponents Kansas and West Virginia.
The “roller coaster,” as coach Mike Boynton puts it, leaves the Cowboys’ tournament resume with its share of highlights but enough losses to counter them.
ESPN bracketologist Joe Lunardi projects seven Big 12 teams to make the field of 68; the Cowboys, at 15-11 with a 5-8 conference record, are not one of them.
Lunardi said in a phone interview with The Oklahoman he would view OSU differently had it not lost to Kansas State, a No. 11 seed in his most recent projection, on Wednesday.
“That was — I don’t want to say a dagger, but it was pretty close,” Lunardi said. “I just don’t see a realistic path for them, particularly given their remaining schedule . ... The common sense element has to come into play at some point, and you go, ‘Wow, they’re a hard out, but they’re not good enough.’”
Lunardi compared OSU, with its pair of marquee victories, to St. John’s, which defeated formerly top-ranked opponents Duke and Villanova in consecutive games after losing its first 11 conference games.
“On a given Sunday in the NFL, a 7-9 team will beat the Patriots,” Lunardi said. “But that doesn’t mean they should be in the playoffs.”
Three of OSU’s final five regular-season games are on the road. The Cowboys also host Texas Tech and Kansas, the Big 12’s top two teams. Finishing at least 3-2 will be necessary to keep tournament hopes going; no Big 12 team has made the tournament with a conference record worse than 8-10 under the league’s 10-team format.
The Cowboys have yet to win consecutive Big 12 games and would need to do so to make the tournament as an at-large team or conference tournament champion. Lunardi said the Cowboys will likely also need some of the Big 12’s other bubble teams, notably TCU, Kansas State, Baylor and Texas, to sputter at season’s end.
Although the NCAA Tournament is among the Cowboys’ goals, Boynton said he wants his players to focus on the present, not what’s potentially down the line.
“You don’t want to get so consumed with the big picture that you don’t focus on the task at hand,” Boynton said. “But at the same time, you know if you do well, you put three or four straight games where you play well together, then the entire conversation changes.”