Lamont Evans Could Hold Keys to Success for Pokes

We have talked a lot about new OSU men’s head basketball coach Mike Boynton. We have talked a little about new OSU men’s associate head basketball coach Lamont Evans. The latter, as it turns out, might be as instrument (if not more so) to Oklahoma State’s future success as a college basketball program.

My man Matt Norlander did a story during this month’s Final Four on Evans and shone a light on how important he was to building South Carolina’s team. Evans was an assistant for SC from 2012-16.

“Lamont was so pivotal,” Gamecocks assistant Matt Figger told Norlander. “Lamont was — I’ve never seen a person work as hard to recruit one kid in P.J. Dozier as Lamont Evans did.”

Dozier averaged 14-5-3-2 and scored double-digit points in every one of South Carolina’s postseason games. He was the No. 1 player in the state of South Carolina and the No. 25 player in the country. And Evans got him.

“You know how us coaches will make phone calls at night to kids,” said Figger to Norlander, “Lamont does just the opposite. He calls kids before they go to school. And this kid always take his phone calls. PJ liked it that Lamont always calls him before he went to school. While everybody’s trying to get a hold of PJ after school, Lamont already got him in the morning.”

It’s clear that Evans and Boynton are already trying to make waves on the recruiting trail. They’re scouring the East Coast and trying to snag future Pokes from the jowls of the North Carolinas, Louisvilles and Virginias of the world.

That’s exciting to me. Evans is exciting to me as a recruiter and his past prowess gives a sliver of hope into the future of just how this could work. That doesn’t mean it will, but there’s at least a scenario or path to future success.

“I couldn’t be happier that Lamont Evans is staying a Cowboy,” Boynton said after he was hired. “Lamont is an unbelievably hard worker. That’s key. He’s tremendously loyal, smart, knows basketball, and for us it’s all about relationships. To have the opportunity, at my first head coaching position, to have someone who I’m so in line with philosophically gives me great comfort and I cannot thank him enough.”

If he keeps delivering P.J. Doziers then we’ll all have something to be thankful for.