Oklahoma State coach Mike Boynton sees bright future for K-State basketball
Mike Boynton will never enjoy coaching a basketball game inside Bramlage Coliseum after what happened to his Oklahoma State team inside the building affectionately known as “The Octagon of Doom” two years ago.
Barry Brown, Kamau Stokes and Dean Wade were seniors for the Wildcats back then, and they crushed the Cowboys 85-46 on their way to a shared Big 12 championship. It was the most thorough beating Boynton can recall being on the wrong side of during his time at Oklahoma State, or anywhere else.
“That place still makes my stomach churn,” Boynton said earlier this week. “I have got some pretty nasty memories there.”
Boynton had a better experience in Manhattan last season, as Oklahoma State won that visit 64-59, and the Cowboys will be road favorites when they return to the arena at 5 p.m. on Saturday for a battle against the struggling Wildcats.
But Boynton isn’t taking anything for granted.
He thinks K-State coach Bruce Weber is building the foundation of a winning team around freshmen Davion Bradford, Selton Miguel and Nijel Pack much the same way he did when Brown, Stokes and Wade were newcomers.
“I think all people in Manhattan would say it wasn’t pretty, but they stuck with the process and they believed in what they were doing and they became Big 12 champions,” Boynton said. “That is kind of who they are right now. That’s college basketball in many ways.
“If you are going to do it the right way and not cut corners, you have got to get a lot of young guys and teach them how to play. You have got to learn through some bumpy roads and, eventually, if they stick together they can find some success. I think this team is getting better. They are much better right now than they were a month ago. I expect them to be much better in a month than they are today.”
It might be easy to pass those comments off as one coach going out of his way to compliment another in the name of gamesmanship, but Boynton has a history of being a thoughtful observer of Big 12 basketball.
He has a track record for going against the grain with his votes in the preseason poll. Two years ago, he gave his first-place vote to K-State instead of traditional favorite Kansas because he liked the Wildcats’ senior leadership, and he was proven correct. Last year, he voted Baylor first and the Bears had their best season in school history.
Boynton says he has been most impressed with Bradford in the middle of K-State’s starting lineup, which features three freshmen for the first time since the formation of the Big 12.
“He is a load in there and he is getting more comfortable as the games go along,” Boynton said, “and (Weber) has got some really, really athletic players and guys who can really shoot it.”
Weber has also expressed confidence in the trajectory of K-State basketball, but the Wildcats are off to a disappointing 5-7 start that included a humiliating loss to Fort Hays State.
K-State’s most recent 82-71 loss to Texas Tech felt like a microcosm of the season. The Wildcats were terrific on offense and scored more points against the Red Raiders than any other team has all season, yet they still lost by double digits.
Losing is no fun.
“We are obviously in this to win games,” Weber said Thursday on his radio show. “But as a young team we are also trying to make progress. In that aspect, we definitely grew and made some progress ... We keep making strides in different areas but we have got to get a little more consistent.”
Boynton was shocked when K-State lost to Fort Hays, but he compared it to Oklahoma State blowing a 19-point lead over West Virginia in its last game. The Cowboys are also a young team, and they hadn’t yet learned the importance of playing a full 40 minutes.
That, he said, is simply part of coaching a young team.
“There is no way, I would bet, that Bruce Weber and his staff could have convinced those freshmen that Fort Hays was good enough to beat them,” Boynton said. “They should win the win game, but that is the challenge you have with young guys, the fearlessness and ultimate confidence they have in themselves is sometimes misguided.”
This story was originally published January 8, 2021 at 10:06 AM with the headline "Oklahoma State coach Mike Boynton sees bright future for K-State basketball."