Why Oklahoma State’s final three was so open ... and why one coach wasn’t watching
Mike Boynton turned away.
The Oklahoma State coach is truthful about this. On his team’s final chance to tie — a three-point attempt from Lindy Waters with nine seconds left — he angled his body in a different direction.
“A lot of times, I don’t watch the action that’s happening,” Boynton said following his team’s 72-67 loss to Kansas on Saturday. “I assume that they’re going to try to do what I ask them to do.”
It was a candid response. With the game hanging in the balance, Boynton basically admitted he became human like the rest of us.
And for a brief moment — much like KU fans watching in their living rooms — he turned his eyes to look elsewhere.
“But I did see him when he did take the dribble,” Boynton said. “He was wide open.”
Let’s be honest: A lot went into KU’s five-point victory on Saturday, but when asked to recall this game a year from now, we’ll most likely only remember this shot.
Oklahoma State down three. Waters dribbling up the court on the right side. Those two seconds when his shot floated in the air after he attempted it with no one around.
“We got lucky,” KU coach Bill Self said.
Boynton called timeout to set everything up in the huddle just before that. Self spoke earlier in the week about Oklahoma State having the best tandem of three-point shooters in the conference, and Boynton came up with a clever way to utilize that advantage.
Instead of having point guard Isaac Likekele bring the ball upcourt, Boynton had him set a screen for Waters, who received the inbounds pass. The Oklahoma State coach knew that Self liked to switch everything in these situations, so Boynton had his other shooter — Thomas Dziagwa — come forward as if he was setting a ball screen.
It wasn’t a real one, though. Dziagwa faked before curling to the perimeter, with KU’s Quentin Grimes already calling out to switch. Ochai Agbaji heard him, and suddenly, KU had two players on Dziagwa and none on Waters.
“At the end of the day, we got what we wanted,” Boynton said. “We’ve got the best three-point shooter in the conference with a wide-open three.”
Waters, a 46-percent three-point shooter, had been even better this week. Against Texas Tech on Wednesday, he hit four threes to send the game to overtime, with each seemingly carrying a higher degree of difficulty.
On three of those tries, Texas Tech’s defenders were so close that Waters had to avoid landing on them when finishing his jumps.
He’d been even more accurate this year, though, when left alone. Coming into the game, Synergy Sports Technology’s logs had Waters taking 21 “unguarded” three-pointers in half-court settings.
He’d made 11.
“Fortunately,” Self said, “the hottest shooter in the country just didn’t make it.”
This time, the ball hit back rim, and Agbaji scrambled to the rebound. After the KU guard was fouled, he immediately went over to Grimes to figure out the miscue.
“Why were you telling me to switch?” Agbaji asked his teammate.
Grimes explained briefly, then accepted responsibility.
“We’ll obviously go over it,” Agbaji said, before letting out a smile. “He knows it was his fault.”
For Self, it was relief mixed with perhaps some feeling that the basketball gods had evened everything out.
The Cowboys had shot over their heads for the previous 39 1/2 minutes. Maybe five or six of Oklahoma State’s 11 three-pointers were the result of KU blown assignments, but the rest were just good individual plays. The team also made 10 of 18 mid-range shots (56 percent), which was nearly double the accuracy it’d had the rest of the season (33 percent).
“They took some marginal shots and made them, which is a tribute to them,” Self said.
This is where it can be hard to be a coach. Leadership manuals would tell us to value the process over results, but in this case, Boynton’s team was often rewarded for suboptimal offense, then penalized when it did everything right during a crucial late possession.
“That’s why you don’t get caught up in that. You can’t,” Boynton said. “I’ll take that shot again if we had to go play it over right now.”
This is the truth, even if it can be hard to accept.
Sometimes, when a shot goes in the air like it did Saturday, basketball reminds us that much of the final result can still be determined by factors that aren’t predictable.
The randomness not only gives us a reason to watch.
It also can give us a reason to look away.
This story was originally published March 2, 2019 at 6:02 PM.
