Cowboys conclude homestand Saturday, 1 p.m. against Nicholls

Saturday, November 22

Stillwater

1:00 PM

Oklahoma State University

Nicholls

Buy Tickets

Image Taken at the Oklahoma State Cowboys vs South Florida Bulls Basketball Game, Wednesday, November 19, 2025, Galagher-Iba Arena, Stillwater, OK. Bruce Waterfield/OSU Athletics

Photo by: Oklahoma State University

Cowboys conclude homestand Saturday, 1 p.m. against Nicholls

November 21, 2025 | Cowboy Basketball

Cowboy Notes (PDF)Nicholls Notes (PDF)

NICHOLLS (0-4) at OKLAHOMA STATE (5-0)
Saturday, Nov. 22 | 1 p.m. CT
Stillwater, Okla. | Gallagher-Iba Arena

Tickets: okstate.com/tickets
Watch: ESPN+ (Adam Hildebrandt & Bryndon Manzer)
Listen: The Varsity Network App / KSPI-AM 780/Pete 94.3 FM in Stillwater
(Dylan McLemore, Brooks Manzer)
Live Stats: okstate.statbroadcast.com
Series: OSU leads 1-0 (1-0 in Stillwater); Last: Nov. 21, 2010 in Stillwater (OSU, 76-56)

Coaches:
Steve Lutz (Texas Lutheran '95); 2nd Season at OSU (22-18); 5th Overall (91-53)
Tevon Saddler (Nicholls '18); 3rd Season at NICH (40-31), Same Overall

The Basics:

The Oklahoma State Cowboys conclude a six-game homestand Saturday when they host the Nicholls Colonels at Gallagher-Iba Arena.
Tipoff has been moved up to 1 p.m. CT — one hour earlier than originally scheduled — to avoid overlap with OSU's road football game at UCF, which kicks off at 3 p.m.
Tickets are on sale at okstate.com/tickets. The Cowboys are honoring faculty and staff with discounted admission.
Fans are invited to stick around GIA afterward to watch the OSU-UCF football game on the big screen.

Opening Tips:

OSU (5-0) is off to its best start since the 2020-21 season, when Cade Cunningham and company opened with six straight victories.
The Cowboys already boast a pair of top-100 KenPom wins, having defeated Texas A&M (No. 71) and South Florida (No. 76).
According to Bart Torvik's Wins-Above-Bubble metric, OSU currently owns the nation's 14th-best résumé—0.7 wins above the average NCAA Tournament bubble team.
The 198 combined points scored in Wednesday's 103-95 win over USF make it the seventh-highest scoring regulation contest in GIA's 88-year history.
Sophomore guard Vyctorius Miller poured in a team-high 24 points against the Bulls, raising his team-leading average to 20.6 points per game. He's shooting an efficient 62% from the field, 52% from three and 88% from the free throw line.
Per KenPom's adjusted tempo, OSU ranks as the nation's third-fastest team
OSU and Nicholls have met just once before on the hardwood (Nov. 21, 2010). In that matchup, current assistant Keiton Page scored a team-high 18 points in a 76–56 Cowboy victory.
Head coach Steve Lutz faced Nicholls six times during his two seasons at Southland Conference rival Texas A&M–Corpus Christi (2021-23).
The Cowboys are averaging 92.8 points per game on 49.2% shooting, while holding opponents to 73.0 points on just 37.8% marksmanship.
OSU has surpassed the 90-point mark three times already this season after doing so twice all of last season.
OSU has had a different leading rebounder in each of its first five games while posting a dominant +11.4 rebounding margin.
The Cowboys are 18-4 at home under Lutz, including a perfect 5-0 this season.
OSU is 106-6 all-time in home games played during the month of November.
The Cowboys will play three of their next four away from Stillwater, beginning Thanksgiving night in Chicago against Northwestern.

Last Time on Cowboy Basketball:
Wednesday | Stillwater | OSU 103, USF 95

Vyctorius Miller scored 14 of his 24 points after halftime, and Kanye Clary dished out a career-high 11 assists to help OSU pull away from USF.
Miller knocked down all four of his three-point attempts for the Cowboys, who shot a blistering 59.4% from the field—including 67% in the second half—to erase an early 13-point deficit.
Trailing 44-31 with 4:09 left in the first half, OSU closed on a 13-1 run to cut the margin to one at the break.
The momentum carried over, as the Cowboys erupted for 59 second-half points, connecting on 22-of-33 shots from the field and 7-of-11 from beyond the arc.
Clary added 12 points and finished three rebounds shy of a triple-double. His 11 assists mark the first double-digit assist performance by a Cowboy since Isaac Likekele on Feb. 6, 2020, against TCU.

Getting to the Points:

Wednesday night's 103-95 win over South Florida was the seventh-highest scoring regulation game in Gallagher-Iba Arena history (198 combined points).
The Cowboys averaged a Lutz era best 1.28 points per possession (1.48 during their 59-point second half).
Both of OSU's 100-point games since 2017 have come under Lutz. The other came last February in a 104-95 win over UCF (GIA's sixth-highest scoring regulation contest).

Highest Scoring Regulation Games in GIA History:
222 -- 1/18/1989 vs. Oral Roberts -- W, 124-98
214 -- 12/3/1977 vs. Santa Fe College -- W, 127-87
206 -- 1/2/2007 vs. Southwestern Okla. -- W, 129-77
201 -- 3/3/1990 vs. Oklahoma -- L, 94-107
199 -- 3/4/1993 vs. Oral Roberts -- W, 114-85
199 -- 2/19/2025 vs. UCF -- W, 104-95
198 -- 11/19/2025 vs. South Florida -- W, 103-95
195 -- 12/7/1977 vs. Texas -- L, 87-108
195 -- 1/3/2009 vs. Northwestern St. -- W, 122-73
192 -- 1/21/2009 vs. Missouri -- L, 95-97

Finishing Strong:

OSU has dominated late, outscoring opponents by an average of more than 13 points after halftime.
The Cowboys are averaging 48.8 second-half points on 52.7% shooting while holding opponents to 35.6 and 34.9% respectively.

Cowboys in the Second Half:
vs. ORU -- 45-25 (+20)
vs. TX A&M – 44-34 (+10)
vs. PVAMU – 48-35 (+13)
vs. A&M-CC – 48-34 (+14)
vs. USF – 59-50 (+50)
Averages: 48.8-35.6 (+13.2)

Trending

Bench minutes and productivity continue to be a Steve Lutz trademark. Cowboy reserves have clocked 44.5% of the minutes (eighth nationally, per KenPom) and scored 44.0% of the points.
The Cowboys have gotten at least 33 bench points in every game this season and their 39.4 points per game ranks 21^st nationally.
The Cowboys have scored at least 80 points in all five games and are a combined 17-0 under Lutz when doing so.
Lutz has now used five different starting fives.
Lefteris Mantzoukas and Isaiah Coleman both made their first OSU starts on Wednesday, meaning nine different Pokes have taken at least one turn.
OSU has made at least half of its shots in back-to-back games. The Cowboys topped the 50% mark just three times all of last year.
OSU has outshot and outrebounded all five opponents
The Cowboys are 19-2 under Lutz when leading at halftime. Prior to Wednesday's comeback, OSU had been just 2-16 when trailing at the midway point. The Pokes trailed SMU 41-40 at halftime in their second round NIT win and escaped a 31-25 hole to defeat Tarleton State.

The Series with Nicholls:

The Cowboys and Colonels have met just once on the hardwood -- on Nov. 21, 2010.
OSU assistant coach Keiton Page was a junior at the time.
Nicholls was led by Anatoly Bose, a 6-foot-6 Australian who went on to win the Southland Conference scoring title.
Bose poured in 37 of the Colonels' 56 points, but the Cowboys cruised to a 76-56 victory, shooting 62% to Nicholls 31.4%, while winning the battle of the boards, 37-23.
Page finished with a team-high 18 points on 8-of-12 shooting.

Scouting the Colonels:

Nicholls has posted back-to-back 20-win seasons under head coach Tevon Saddler, a 2018 Nicholls graduate and one of the nation's youngest head coaches at just 30 years old.
Projected fourth out of 12 teams in the Southland Conference by Blue Ribbon College Basketball Preview, the Colonels (0-4) are currently navigating a grueling stretch of seven straight road games to start the season -- one that includes visits to Kentucky, OSU and Creighton.
Saddler a signature win early in his tenure under similar circumstances when Nicholls stunned LSU, 68-66 in Baton Rouge on Nov. 10, 2023.
Nicholls' top three scorers are all returning senior starters: 6-foot guard Trae English (14.0 ppg, 35.1 mpg), 6-8 forward Jaylen Searles (11.3 ppg) and 6-8 forward Sincere Malone (10.0 ppg, 4.8 rpg, 32.3 mpg).
Eight of the top nine Colonels (in minutes played) are seniors or graduate students.
6-7 Jalik Dunkley – a sophomore transfer from NAIA Arizona Christian -- is the lone exception. He's averaging 8.0 points in 25.8 minutes per game and is tied with Malone for the team lead in both rebounds (4.8) and steals (1.75).
Nicholls has forced an average of 9.0 steals and 14.5 turnovers per game but ranks among the bottom-10 nationally in field goal percentage (.363) and rebounding margin (-9.8).

Matchup Mashup:

OSU head coach Steve Lutz has never faced Tevon Saddler but is well-acquainted with Nicholls from his days in the Southland Conference. His A&M-Corpus Christi teams split six meetings with the Colonels over two seasons (2021-23).
Four of those games came during the 2021-22 season. Nicholls beat Corpus Christi in the preseason conference tournament and then swept a regular season home-and-home on its way to the Southland regular season title. However, Lutz avenged the losses in the conference tournament, upsetting the top-seeded Colonels, 71-64, in the semifinals en route to an eventual NCAA Tournament berth.
In 2022-23, Corpus Christi swept two more regular season meetings to even the count at 3-3.

On This Date: Nov. 22

OSU is 8-2 all-time on Nov. 22
2016 -- Jawun Evans became just the fifth Cowboy to record 30+ points in back-to-back games (and the first ever to do it on consecutive days) with a 30-point performance against UNC at the Maui Invitational. Evans was coming off a 35-point quarterfinal effort against UConn.
2021 -- OSU tied a school record with 16 blocks in a 96-66 win over College of Charleston. Moussa Cisse (6) and Kalib Boone (5) combined for 11 of them.
2024 – Bryce Thompson joined OSU's 1,000-point club in the Cowboys' 80-74 victory over Miami at the Charleston Classic.

A Cowboy win would...

Extend their all-time series lead over Nicholls to 2-0 (2-0 in Stillwater).
Improve their home record under Steve Lutz to 19-4 (.826), including 11-0 in non-conference regular season contests.
Boost Lutz's career record to 92-53 in parts of five seasons as a head coach (23-18 at OSU).
Make them 878-268 all-time in GIA (now in its 88^th season), including 107-6 in November games.
Give them 15 straight non-conference regular season wins inside GIA, dating back to December 2023, and make them 462-60 (.885) all-time.
Be their second win over a Southland Conference opponent this season, following Sunday's 85-69 victory over A&M-Corpus Christi.

A Cowboy loss would...

Make them 1-1 all-time against Nicholls.
Be their first non-conference regular season home loss since Nov. 30, 2023 against Creighton, snapping a 14-game winning streak.

Up Next: Northwestern (United Center/Chicago)
Thursday, Nov. 27 | Approx. 9:30 p.m. CT

Oklahoma State heads to Chicago next week for a Thanksgiving clash with the Northwestern Wildcats inside the United Center.
It's the nightcap in a doubleheader that begins with a 7 p.m. tip between Duke and Arkansas.
The Cowboys have never faced Northwestern and have never played at the United Center -- home to the NBA's Chicago Bulls and NHL's Blackhawks. The school's last appearance in the Windy City came in December 1990, during the first year of the Eddie Sutton era.
The game is part of a new two-year neutral court series between OSU and Northwestern, continuing next season in Oklahoma City.
Northwestern enters its 13^th season under head coach Chris Collins, a Chicago-area native who has established a winning pedigree with the Wildcats. The program earned consecutive NCAA Tournament berths in 2023 and 2024, advancing to the second round each time. This will be just the third regular season game that Northwestern has played at the United Center, though the venue has been a regular stage for the Wildcats during the Big Ten tournament.
Senior Nick Martinelli, a second-team All-Big Ten selection, returns to lead the Wildcats after averaging 20.5 points and 6.2 rebounds last year.
Former Cowboy guard Isaac Likekele is in his first year as a graduate manager on the Wildcat staff.