At this point, Oklahoma State men’s basketball coach Travis Ford realizes, the dichotomy of his team is no secret to Big 12 opponents.
When the Cowboys are shooting well from three-point range, they represent a formidable foe on any given night.
When they’re not, outings like Saturday’s can prove to be especially rough.
Three of the team’s top four long-range shooters — Terrel Harris, James Anderson and Keiton Page — combined to shoot just 4-for-20 from beyond the arc in the Cowboys’ 78-67 loss to No. 21 Kansas University, a performance that dropped OSU to 18-8 (3-5 in the Big 12) this season and left Ford shaking his head.
“We can’t be successful unless they are,” the first-year coach said of his shooters. “We don’t have any other options. We are who we are. I wish we had other (things) we could do. But we need to shoot the ball well to be successful.”
With no starter taller than 6-foot-8 — and the lack of multiple go-to players — OSU’s success this season has depended largely on its ability to connect on three-point shots.
In the early stages of the season, the Cowboys’ long-range marksmanship proved vital as the team sprung to a 14-3 record, and four of the team’s players, at one point, featured three-point field-goal percentages higher than 40.
But during a recent slide, in which the team has gone 2-5, some of those same players have cooled off significantly, with Saturday’s loss representing a particularly forgettable outing.
“We had a lot of wide-open shots that we just didn’t convert,” said OSU senior point guard Byron Eaton, who finished with eight points and 10 assists. “I mean, I was getting guys a lot of shots. I could have had a lot more assists than I had.”
There were some bright spots for the Cowboys. Sophomore forward Marshall Moses, who entered the game averaging just 4.8 points and four rebounds per game, finished with 18 points and eight rebounds against Kansas’ Cole Aldrich, despite giving up five inches to the Jayhawks’ center.
Oklahoma State managed to hold KU point guard Sherron Collins to 4-of-12 shooting, meanwhile, and handily won the turnover battle.
But the team’s shooting woes proved too costly, leaving the Cowboys scrambling — ineffectively — to catch up in the game’s final minutes.
Afterward, Eaton assured reporters that he’d do everything in his power to help his teammates break out of their funk — even if that meant spending Saturday night rebounding for them once they arrived back in Stillwater.
“We got a four-hour ride back, so it’s going to start as soon as we get on that bus,” Eaton said. “I’m going to start talking to those guys. It’s unacceptable the way those guys shoot. Like I said, if they couldn’t shoot, I’d be like, ‘Well, OK man, I understand.’ But them guys can shoot. When we get back tonight, we’re going to the gym, we’re going to do something. We’re going to have to get those guys’ shots back on, because we’re definitely going to need those guys.”
