Oklahoma State’s road map to the NCAA Tournament is pretty easy to follow. The team needs to win its last four regular-season games to have any chance at an at-large bid.
The Cowboys (16-11, 4-10 Big 12), who have lost five straight including three by double digits, will start this quest Tuesday when they take on West Virginia (16-11, 7-7) in Stillwater, Okla.
Oklahoma State’s last three games are Saturday at Cincinnati, at UCF (March 3) and at home against No. 5 Houston on March 7.
After beating then-No. 16 BYU on Feb. 4 to get back into the tournament picture, the Cowboys have struggled to get anything right.
Saturday’s game was the latest example, an 83-69 loss at Colorado in which the Cowboys had 15 turnovers and made only 5 of 23 3-point attempts.
“They had good defense, but we did some things to shoot ourselves in the foot,” Oklahoma State coach Steve Lutz said. “Stuff that is uncharacteristic and not good basketball plays. Maybe we tried to make the hard pass when we had a chance to make the easy pass. It came back to bite us.”
Anthony Roy, who leads the Cowboys with 17.0 points per game, had an off night hitting only 3 of 10 shots from the field and going 0-for-7 from the 3-point line, to finish with six points.
The Mountaineers are in a similar situation. They won at UCF on Feb. 14 to get back into the bubble picture but then lost at home to a Utah team that had only one Big 12 win and gave up a late lead in Saturday’s 60-54 loss at TCU.
After West Virginia took a 52-48 lead with 5:42 to play, the Horned Frogs ended the game on a 12-2 run.
“For large stretches of the game, for both teams it kind of felt like, ‘Ok, who actually wants to win this game today?'” West Virginia coach Ross Hodge said. “I didn’t think either team played very well for most of the night, but I think the other team deserves credit for making the other play poorly. Whichever team ultimately decided they wanted to win the game, I thought would.”
Honor Huff continues to lead the Mountaineers, averaging 15.4 points after scoring 13 in the loss to TCU.
