Cowboys cruise at home
Oklahoma State, playing again without Jeffrey Carroll and Davon Dillard, routed Oral Roberts 91-48 on Thursday night to move to 3-0 on the season.
STILLWATER — The Cowboys’ opening to this basketball season now looks squishy enough to think they could have played short-handed and still won.
Oh yeah, they did. Oklahoma State, again without Jeffrey Carroll and
Davon Dillard, routed Oral Roberts 91-48 Thursday night, moving to 3-0 in a start that features a 30.3point average margin of victory.
Before an estimated 2,000 at Gallagher-Iba Arena, the Cowboys surged behind a 21-8 run to close the first half, and kept surging, tacking on a 21-2 run in the second half.
Brandon Averette, OSU’s 5-foot-11 guard who provided one of Monday’s national sports highlights with a hammer dunk against Charlotte, this time starred from the perimeter. Averette fired in 4-of-6 shots from the arc and finished with a career-high 21 points off the bench.
ORU was content to give Averette open 3-point looks early, until he made his first three.
“That’s how teams have been guarding me so far, giving me the 3,” Averette said. “So I just stay in the gym working on my 3-point shot, so people can’t just back off me.”
Averette also dished out nine assists, without a turnover, playing perhaps his most complete game as a Cowboy.
“He’s a kid who’s earned this,” said OSU coach Mike Boynton. “He truly embraces the ‘let’s work’ mentality we’ve had from Day 1. He spends as much time in that gym as any basketball player I’ve ever been around."
Mitchell Solomon added 12 points and seven rebounds for the Cow
boys, while Thomas Dziagwa and Zack Dawson added 11 points each, boosting a dominant 51-11 edge in bench scoring.
Boynton delivering discipline
Things are much quieter around the Cowboys these days, with Boynton’s calm and quiet replacing the booming voice of Brad Underwood.
That doesn’t mean Boynton’s a softy. Sophomore forward
Cameron McGriff missed the first half of Thursday’s game after arriving late for shoot-around, joining Dillard and Dawson as players to miss time for team violations already this season, which is only three games old.
“Cam’s a great kid,” Boynton said. “The standards don’t get lowered in this program for anybody. Everybody’s got to play by the same rules.”
Carroll and Dillard are expected to return soon, even as soon as Monday night when the Cowboys play next.
Up next: Texas A&M
The Cowboys now advance to the semifinals of the Legends Classic at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, Boynton’s hometown.
There they will face former Big 12 rival and No. 16-ranked Texas A&M at 6 p.m. Monday. Tuesday, they’ll play either Pittsburgh or Penn State.
Eddie! Eddie!
Cowboys coaching legend Eddie Sutton made the trip from Tulsa to attend Thursday night’s game.
Sutton’s son Scott coached ORU the past 18 years and is now an assistant on the OSU staff.
Late in the game, Trey Reeves — the son of Bryant Reeves — was guarding Spencer Sutton, the son of former Cowboys player and coach Sean Sutton.