Cowboy Basketball Notes: Texas Tech

rv/rv Texas Tech (20-9, 9-7) at Oklahoma State (12-17, 4-12)
Tuesday, Mar. 5, 2024 | 7:01 p.m. CT
Stillwater, Okla. | Gallagher-Iba Arena (13,611)

Tickets: okstate.com/tickets
TV: Big 12 Now on ESPN+ (Ted Emrich & Bryndon Manzer)
Radio: Cowboy Network (Dave Hunziker & John Holcomb)
Live Stats: okstate.statbroadcast.com
Series: OSU leads 50-25 (27-5 in Stillwater)
Last: Jan. 9, 2024 in Lubbock (TTU, 90-73)

The Basics:

The Oklahoma State Cowboys (12-17, 4-12) close out the home portion of their schedule Tuesday against the Texas Tech Red Raiders (20-9, 9-7) at Gallagher-Iba Arena.
Weston Church, Jarius Hicklen, Brooks Manzer, Mike Marsh, Carson Sager and John-Michael Wright will take part in a pregame Senior Night ceremony.
OSU is looking to a snap a three-game skid, which began with close home losses to Oklahoma and UCF and continued with Saturday's 81-65 setback at Texas. John-Michael Wright scored 18 points and made 4-of-9 threes for the Cowboys who tied the game at 52 near the 12:00-mark before falling victim to a 14-0 Longhorn run.
The loss locks OSU into a Tuesday first-round matchup at next week's Phillips 66 Big 12 Championship, but the Cowboys are still playing for seeding. They hold a head-to-head tiebreaker over West Virginia (also 4-14) for No. 13. Both teams are two games back of UCF and Cincinnati with two to play.
The Red Raiders are fighting for a top-four finish and a double-bye into Thursday's quarterfinal round. They enter the week tied with Kansas and BYU for fourth-place in the standings.
Texas Tech is on the road for the second time in four days after winning Saturday at West Virginia (81-70).
The Red Raiders defeated the Cowboys eight weeks ago in Lubbock but will be searching for their first win at GIA since 2019. They're 5-27 all-time in Stillwater.
OSU is 7-1 in March games vs. TTU with six straight wins, including the 2022 and 2023 regular season finales.
OSU is 5-1 under Boynton in home finales. The lone loss came last year to Baylor.

Watch/Listen:

Reserve your seats at okstate.com/tickets.
The game will air on Big 12 Now on ESPN+ with Ted Emrich and Bryndon Manzer.
Dave Hunziker and John Holcomb have the call on the Cowboy Radio Network.

On this Date: Mar. 5

1995 – Randy Rutherford scored 45 points and made a school-record 11 threes on 19 attempts in the regular season finale at No. 3 Kansas.
1999 -- OSU avenged two regular season losses to Oklahoma by winning a Big 12 quarterfinal classic, 60-57. The Sooners focused their defensive efforts on Big 12 player of the year Adrian Peterson (3 points) but paid the price when Gordon Alexander (22) hit on 6-of-10 from three.
2022 -- OSU upset 12th-ranked Texas Tech, 52-51, at GIA to wrap up its 2021-22 season.

Last Time on Cowboy Basketball:
Saturday, Mar. 2 in Austin, Texas | Texas 81, OSU 65

OSU bounced back from two early Texas runs but couldn't survive a third.
John-Michael Wright scored 18 points and Quion Williams and Javon Small added 13 each to go with 11 from Jamyron Keller.
Dylan Disu had 17 points and Max Abmas sank his 500th career three-pointer for UT, which shot 47.1% including 9-of-25 from deep.
OSU made just 41.2% (5/19 3pt) but converted 18 of 21 free throws.
UT won the rebounding (+11) and turnover (+7) columns, logging 24 points on 17 takeaways while outscoring OSU 22-1 on second-chances.
An 11-0 UT run snapped an 18-all tie midway through the first half. After OSU cut it to 33-30 near the 4:00-mark, the hosts rallied again for a 45-36 halftime lead.
OSU scored three fastbreak layups in a span of 78 seconds early in the second half, followed by back-to-back Wright threes. Small's jumper in the lane tied the game at 52 with 12:21 remaining, but Texas scored the next 14 points to pull away.

Tracking Trends:

In Big 12 play, OSU has outscored foes by a league-best 5.5 points per game at the foul line. The Cowboys are averaging 16.8 makes on 22.1 free throw attempts (both second only to Baylor), while their opponents average a league-low 11.3 makes on 15.5 attempts.
The Cowboys are 9-0 this season when scoring at least 75 points in regulation.
OSU is 11-4 with a halftime lead compared to 1-13 when tied or trailing. The exception came in the home win over West Virginia when the Cowboys trailed 33-32 at the break but went on to win by four.
OSU's 57.4% shooting percentage against Oklahoma (Feb. 24) was its highest in a loss since Feb. 1, 1997. The Cowboys are 35-5 under Boynton when making at least half of their shots (5-1 this season).
Boynton teams are also 101-28 when out-shooting their opponent (9-3 in 2023-24).
OSU is 3-10 in two possession games (decided by six points in either direction).
Ten of the 17 Cowboy losses have been one possession games within the final minute. OSU fell on a buzzer beater to Oklahoma on Feb. 24 and, in eight others, had the ball with less than 20 seconds left and chance to tie or take the lead.

Player Notables:

Javon Small ranks among the Big 12 leaders in scoring (12th, 14.5), assists (10th, 4.3), free throw percentage (4th, .861), defensive rebounding (7th, 4.6) and minutes (10th, 33.2).
Brandon Garrison's 1.34 blocks-per-game ranks sixth on the Big 12 Conference leaderboard. His 39 total blocks are the fifth-most ever by an OSU freshman.
Small, Quion Williams and freshman Jamyron Keller have stepped up their scoring in the absence of senior guard Bryce Thompson, who suffered a season-ending shoulder injury in the Jan. 30 game at Kansas.
Small has put up at least 13 points in each of the eight games since, averaging 16.6 points.
Williams averaged 2.9 points in nine January games but has put up 12.3-per-game since Feb. 1. He's reached double-figure in six of the eight games in that span.
Keller has made the biggest jump of them all. He had clocked just 25 Big 12 minutes prior to Thompson's injury but has averaged more than 30 minutes in the four weeks since, along with 11.2 points per game.
Over the past five games, six different Cowboys have had a 20-point performance: Keller (22) and Garrison (21) vs. BYU, Small (21), Williams (21) and Dailey (20) against Oklahoma and John-Michael Wright (22) vs. UCF.
Wright was OSU's seventh different 20-point scorer overall this season, tying a school record set three times previously (1989-90, 1985-86 and 1984-85),
Williams' six double-figure rebounding games is tied for fourth-most in the Big 12.

All Wright Now:

College Basketball Reference maintains an all-time list of top scorers at the major conference level. John-Michael Wright's 2,112 career points are 428^th best. He'll have a chance to pass Wake Forest's Tim Duncan (2,117 from 1993-97) and a handful of other notables on Tuesday night.
Wright had made multiple three-pointers in each of his last 12 games. That's tied for the second-longest such streak in program history with current OSU assistant Keiton Page, who did it in each of his last 12 games (2011-12).
Obi Muonelo set the record with a 17-game stretch in 2008-09.
During his streak, Wright has averaged exactly 3.0 triples per game.
In Big 12 play, Wright ranks among the league leaders in three-pointers by both volume (5th, 2.56) and percentage (7th, .380).

OSU Bests // Consecutive Games w/ Multiple 3pt FG:
17 -- Obi Muonelo (2008-09)
12 -- Keiton Page (2011-2012)
12 -- John-Michael Wright (Active)

The Series with Texas Tech:

OSU has won two-thirds of the matchups in this series (50-25), which began in 1937 and became an annual occurrence some six decades later when Texas Tech joined the Big 12.
OSU has won six of the last eight meetings, however all of them came by five points or less and two of them required overtime.
2023-24 marks the 28th consecutive season that the schools have played each other home-and-home. It's OSU's second-longest active streak behind its Bedlam series with Oklahoma (97 years; 1927-28 to 2023-24).
Similar home-and-home streaks with former Big 12 South rivals Baylor and Texas ended this year due to the league's unbalanced schedule.
OSU is 27-5 all-time against Texas Tech in Stillwater (23-4 in the Big 12 era) with victories in four straight and 18 of the last 20.
OSU is 12-17 in Lubbock (10-15 at United Supermarkets Arena).
The Cowboys are 6-1 in Big 12 tourney matchups with five straight wins, highlighted by a 72-68 victory in the 2005 championship game.
Mike Boynton Jr. is 7-6 against Texas Tech. Five of his wins have come over Red Raider teams that were nationally-ranked.

Last Meeting with Texas Tech:
Jan. 9, 2024 in Lubbock | TTU 90, OSU 73

Hot-shooting Texas Tech connected on 59.3% from the field, including 62% after halftime to put away OSU.
Pop Isaacs led a group of five double-figures with 24 points on 4-of-8 three-point shooting. That's the most OSU has allowed to a Big 12 opponent this season.
Bryce Thompson scored a team-high 17 points on 7-of-11 shooting and Javon Small and John-Michael Wright added 15 and 14 each for OSU, which finished at 47.3% and hit 9-of-25 from deep.
The Cowboys made nine of their first 12 shots, capped by dunks from Brandon Garrison and Quion Williams, to grab a 20-11 lead near the 12:00-mark before missing their next eight attempts.
Texas Tech capitalized with a 19-2 run, flipping a nine point deficit into a nine-point halftime lead, 40-31.
OSU scored 42 second-half points on 52% shooting but fell further behind after Tech put up 50 on 62%. The Red Raiders led by as many as 21 midway through the half.
The Cowboys matched their season low with nine turnovers but forced just four.

Scouting the Red Raiders:

Texas Tech (20-9, 9-7) is under new management.
Former Baylor assistant Grant McCasland spent the past six years building up the program at North Texas, winning a pair of Conference USA titles (2020 and 2022), a first round NCAA tournament game (2021) and an NIT championship (2023). The latter included a quarterfinal win over the Cowboys at GIA.
McCasland's UNT teams led the nation in scoring defense in each of his last two seasons (55.7 in 2022, 55.8 in 2023).
The winning continues in Lubbock, albeit in different fashion. The Red Raider's No. 20 offensive efficiency ranking would be their highest in the KenPom Era (1999-present), ahead of Bobby Knight's 2001-02 team, which finished the year at No. 21.
The Red Raiders lead the league in free throw percentage (.775) and rank second in three-point percentage (.365).
6-2 sophomore Pop Isaacs (15.8 ppg) can score from just about anywhere on the floor. He's hit 63 threes and 84.2% of his 133 free throws.
Isaacs is joined by a core of five transfers (four of them graduates). All played prominent roles on 2023 NCAA tournament teams.
6-foot senior Joe Toussaint (West Virginia) has excelled as both a scorer (12.6 ppg) and distributor (4.3 apg, 2.03 A:TO ratio).
6-6 sophomore wing Darrion Williams (11.2 ppg, team-best 7.5 rpg) was the 2023 Mountain West Freshman of the Year at Nevada.
7-footer Warren Washington (Arizona St.) averages 9.9 points on 62% shooting along with 7.4 rebounds and a team-best 37 blocks.
6-3 guad Chance McMillan (GCU) has been a weapon off the bench, averaging 10.4 points and 2.0 threes (56/144, .389).
The last of the transfers -- 6-6 forward Devan Cambridge (Arizona St.) -- suffered a season-ending knee injury in early December, but 6-5 senior Kerwin Walton (8.5 ppg) has helped fill the void with 56 threes on a league-best 48.7%.
OSU forced a season-low four turnovers in the Jan. 9 game at Texas Tech and matched another with just five assists on 26 baskets (.192). The Red Raiders' 90 points on 66 possessions (1.36 ppp) was the most-efficient outing for a Cowboy opponent in the Boynton Era.

A Cowboy win would...

Improve their record to 13-17 (5-12 Big 12).
Make them 5-6 in conference after an 0-6 start.
Push their home record to 11-7 (4-5 Big 12).
Salvage a season split with Tech and up their all-time series lead to 51-25.
Make them 28-5 vs. Tech in Stillwater (24-4 Big 12 era) with five straight wins.

Up Next: at #20/23 BYU
Saturday, 8 p.m. CT (7 p.m. MT) on ESPN+

OSU wraps up regular season play with its first visit to Provo, Utah in 20 years.
The Cowboys upset then No. 19 BYU on Feb. 17 in Stillwater (93-83) while shooting a season-best 59.6% (11/22 3pt). Freshmen Jamyron Keller (22) and Brandon Garrison (21) led the scoring.
No. 20 BYU (21-8, 9-7 heading into Wednesday's road finale at Iowa State) averages 82.7 points and ranks among the NCAA leaders in three-pointers (3rd, 11.3) and A:TO ratio (4th, 1.79).

Next Event

Players Mentioned

Weston Church

Brandon Garrison

Jarius Hicklen

Jamyron Keller

Brooks Manzer

Mike Marsh

Carson Sager

Javon Small

Bryce Thompson

Quion Williams

John-Michael Wright

Oklahoma State University Athletics