Struggling Cowboys lose their fourth straight game
OSU's three upperclassmen shoot 16 percent
Struggling Cowboys lose their fourth straight game

By Andrea Cohen

Published: January 27, 2008

STILLWATER — Oklahoma State coach Sean Sutton wrote a statistic on the white board in OSU's locker room minutes after the Cowboys' 59-56 loss to No. 18 Texas A&M.

4-for-25.

That's what OSU's three upperclassmen shot from the floor. That 16 percent performance encompasses Marcus Dove's seven misses in the paint, Terrel Harris' zero field goals in 37 minutes on the floor and Byron Eaton's failure to score while repeatedly driving the ball into heavy traffic.

"Coach put a stat up on the board that was embarrassing for me myself, Terrel and Dove,” Eaton said. "He put that up there and he told us, ‘In order for this team to win you three guys can't play like this.' And he's totally right. That's terrible.”

In Oklahoma State's fourth straight loss, the Cowboys' newcomers also made some mistakes. Down one point, freshman Ibrahima Thomas missed a pair of free throws with 20 seconds to play. Still trailing by one point, freshman James Anderson missed a 3-pointer with six seconds to go that Sutton would have preferred the freshman drive rather than shoot beyond the arc.

But the underclassmen weren't the problem on Saturday. In a game OSU needed badly to avoid the basement of the Big 12, Anderson and Thomas were OSU's two high scorers with 15 and 13 points respectively. Freshman Marshall Moses scored five points and sophomore Obi Muonelo scored 10 points in just 15 minutes on the floor.

"I'm proud of the young players,” Sutton said. "I was proud of (the older players') effort, but they gotta make shots when they're open.”

Said Eaton: "The young guys are doing a great job. Forty-three points out of 56 is great. If Dove or Terrel even get close to their average we come out with a win.”

Scoring eluded the upperclassmen, but so did common sense in some crucial situations. With 3.9 seconds on the clock, OSU got the ball back under A&M's basket down three points.

Dove attempted to inbound the ball to Eaton, but the point guard never got a hand on it, Texas A&M's Donald Sloan got the steal, and the game was over. Eaton said afterward that his arm was being held, but that he also tried to let the ball go by him to pick up a little extra time before the clock started running.

Sutton couldn't fathom why that would be necessary. "Because that's a lot of time,” he said. "You can get from baseline to baseline in four seconds.”

The close finish was appropriate for a game that included 10 lead changes and five ties. OSU (10-9, 1-4) came into the game off a tough, two-point loss to Texas at home on Monday, and the Aggies (16-4, 2-3) were the losers in an epic, five-overtime game on Wednesday night. Despite many of them playing 50-plus minutes on Wednesday, four A&M starters went more than 32 minutes on the floor.

"Our bench just isn't giving us a lot, so I'm having to play guys way too many minutes,” Texas A&M coach Mark Turgeon said.

Texas A&M won Saturday's game on free throws — Dominique Kirk hit a pair to put the Aggies up one in the final minute, and Bryan Davis knocked down a pair to give A&M the 3-point lead with 3.9 seconds on the clock.

In their loss against Baylor the Aggies' 23 missed free throws cost them. Turgeon said he was impressed with the way his players came back from such a tough game, having to travel and play early in the day Saturday.

"The toughness was just tremendous,” Turgeon said. "I'm really proud of our guys. We needed that. We needed it badly.”

OSU will seek its second Big 12 win — one it badly needs — Monday night in Norman against the Sooners.

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