Notebook: OSU Scores 100 In Two Straight For First Time In 20 Years

It wasn’t the laugher that we expected, but the Cowboys prevailed 102-90 over the Central Arkansas Bears in Gallagher-Iba Arena on Monday night. It was too close for comfort until about halfway through the second half, when the Pokes went on a run sparked by a Jeffrey Carroll corner 3 at the 11 minute mark. The Cowboys held on, but there’s a lot to discuss. Here’s my notebook from Monday.

• Jeffrey Carroll provided a huge spark off the bench, and he’ll need to this year. Outside of Phil and Jawun, this team doesn’t have a lot of scoring options. Carroll threw down a huge alley-oop from Phil and just barely missed another from Jawun- finished with 20 points.

• Goodness, this team rebounds like my middle school team. A lot of standing around and watching and very little boxing out. Something tells me this won’t sit well with the coaching staff when they watch the film. They won the battle of the boards 37-32, but it shouldn’t have even been close.

• I forgot just how much range Phil has. He’s out here pulling up from the middle of ‘Gallagher’ on the court in the first half, and more 25-footers in the second half. Brandon Manzer eating it up on the broadcast.

• Jordan Howard on UCA tore us up tonight, going for 28. Not a great sign considering the likes of Monte Morris, Daxter Miles, Devonte Graham, Frank Mason, and more play in the Big 12.

• He fouled out, but more positives from Cam McGriff, who hit the boards hard and earned several tie-ups. He tries harder than a Kardashian on Instagram.

• Another freshman, Thomas Dziagwa, ended the first half with a couple big threes and drew a foul. Didn’t see much time at all in the second half, but made the most of his minutes. He may get more playing time soon.

• T-Shine hit a couple threes, and that’s a great sign. If he can continue to play with high energy on defense and knock those down, he’ll get a lot of minutes.

• No Davon Dillard? Tyler Underwood saw the floor before Davon tonight- that should tell you a lot. Bad attitude or not, that’s a head-scratcher. If this keeps up, Dillard may be on his way out of town..

• Mitch Solomon’s final line: 0/1, 0 points, 1 rebound, 5 fouls. Struggled again at hedging too hard on screens — he’s been flat out terrible the first two games of this season. The Cowboys need a lot more from the Bixby Bomber.

• Kyle Cox mentioned this earlier, but we feel very “West Virginia-y” this year- we’ll apply a lot of pressure on defense, foul a lot, and play in some pretty ugly games. This is not a bad thing — it’s just a very different style than we are used to. At times, we played a little too fast, Jawun Evans included. I anticipate this to improve as this team gets more games under its’ belt.

• Several pretty head-scratching turnovers where someone passed to a teammate attempting to set a screen. I know it’s early, but bizarre and ugly.

• OSU has put up 102 in each of its first two games. It’s the first time this has happened in back-to-back games since the 1993-1994 season.

• Giving up 90 to Central Arkansas in GIA is unacceptable. But the Cowboys take it 102-90, hitting triple digits in back to back games for the first time since the 93-94 season. Phil dropped 31, Jawun put up a workman-like 23-8-5-3, Carroll with 20 off the bench.

*Boy, there’s a lot to work on: ball movement on offense, rebounding on both ends, less reaching on defense (30 fouls!), and a whole heck of a lot more from the frontcourt. Hammonds had 8 points and 5 boards, N’Guessan had 4 fouls, 0 points, and 0 rebounds, and McGriff totaled 2 points and 5 boards. However, a win is a win and it could be worse: OSU’s Maui opponent UConn fell to 0-2 after a loss to Northeastern tonight.

On to the next one.