On Saturday afternoon in Lawrence, Kansas, two Big 12 teams clashed in a game that got out of hand quickly.
Bill Self and the Kansas Jayhawks welcomed Steve Lutz and the Oklahoma State Cowboys to Allen Fieldhouse for the 16th game of the Big 12 regular season. The contest became a bloodbath early on, with Kansas torching Oklahoma State in just about every facet of the game.
With that, here are the top three takeaways from Kansas’ 96-64 win over the Cowboys.
Exhale
Things have been pretty rocky in Lawrence, Kansas, lately as Bill Self and the Kansas Jayhawks have looked like a shell of their former selves. Kansas dropped their previous two games against Utah and BYU during their two-game road streak, scoring 62 points on average.
Against Oklahoma State, the floodgates opened, and Kansas put together a full 40 minutes of basketball for the first time in weeks. They scored their most points since January 5th, with a total of 96. Four players reached double digits in the contest, including Hunter Dickinson, Zeke Mayo, Dajuan Harris, and David Coit, who combined for a total of 60 points.
For the Jayhawks, the win against the Cowboys served as a perfect moment to exhale and regroup as post-season play nears.
Did Oklahoma State Get it Wrong?
While it’s tough to put a coach on the hot seat in his first season at the helm, Oklahoma State’s Steve Lutz has not made that conversation very tough.
Coming off of the Mike Boynton era in Stillwater, Oklahoma State fans were starving for change. Unfortunately, things have been more of the same with an empty Gallagher-Iba Arena and an underperforming basketball team.
Lutz accepted the Oklahoma State job following successful stints at Texas A&M Corpus Christi and Western Kentucky, where he totaled 69 wins and 35 losses. In his first year at Oklahoma State, Lutz has already lost 14 games and statistically has one of the worst teams in the Big 12 Conference.
If Steve Lutz is the right guy for Oklahoma State, the Cowboys will have to show some signs of life in the final four games of the year.
New Normal or Outlier?
The win for Kansas feels like two things: it feels like the program lifted a massive weight off their shoulders and gelled, but it also felt like a game where the better team beat up on the other, who was never going to be very competitive.
Following the win over Oklahoma State, Kansas’ path ahead undergoes a significant uptick in opponent skill level, with the Jayhawks facing three ranked teams in their final four games. After a road game against Colorado, Kansas takes on No. 9 Texas Tech, No. 5 Houston, and No. 19 Arizona.
Will we look back at the Oklahoma State game and view it as a turning point for Kansas? Or will it quickly become a Trojan horse of disappointment?
