Coming into the season, the recipe for Travis Ford to get Oklahoma State back to the NCAA Tournament was tough, but doable: Coax solid performances from the core of Le’Bryan Nash, Phil Forte and Michael Cobbins; ask transfer Anthony Hickey to pick up some of the slack from Marcus Smart’s departure and hope for good years from his capable but unproven role players. While Smart, Markel Brown and two other players left last year’s disappointing team, the remaining core has allowed for a somewhat smooth transition. Still, the Cowboys’ prospects in a loaded Big 12 this season were considered modest at best. Conference coaches certainly didn’t make much of their chances, voting them eighth in the preseason poll. Now, a few months later and with only six games remaining in the regular season, Oklahoma State is nearing lock status for an unlikely NCAA Tournament bid bid thanks to a recent stretch of high-quality basketball.

There’s plenty of reason to smile in Stillwater (Mark D. Smith/USA Today Sports)

Since suffering its worst loss of the season at Kansas State on January 24, Ford’s team has reeled off three straight wins against ranked teams and four of five overall, highlighted by last weekend’s comeback triumph over first-place Kansas and punctuated by a Monday night sweep of a very good Baylor team. The win over the Bears was especially noteworthy as it marked the Cowboys’ first sweep of Baylor since 2006, back when Baylor was barred from playing non-league games in the fallout from the Dave Bliss-Patrick Dennehy scandal. The Cowboys’ recently excellent play couldn’t have come at a better time. They had a successful if not overly impressive non-conference season with neutral court wins against Oregon State and Tulsa accompanied by a nice road win at Memphis, but they lost their two toughest tests before the new year — dropping a game at South Carolina and another to a resurgent Maryland team. The team appeared to have the potential to outperform the meager preseason expectations, but it was unclear whether they would pick up enough wins to make the necessary push for the Dance. Now that they’ve played seven games against the conference’s best teams, though, most of the grunt work is behind them.

As I touched on in yesterday’s Big 12 Power Rankings, the Cowboys have an appealing remaining schedule (by the standards of the rigorous Big 12). They have three games left against the dregs in TCU and Texas Tech and two against a West Virginia team that, while improved, has been exposed in recent outings. The only other game is a home tilt against Iowa State, but with the Cowboys sporting the Big 12’s second-best defense in conference play and likely to get some favorable whistles, there’s a strong chance they’ll be favored there, too.

From a resume perspective, Oklahoma State isn’t completely out of the woods just yet, but league peers like Texas and Kansas State — both predicted to be better than the Pokes and facing tougher schedules down the stretch — definitely wouldn’t mind being in their position. It will be important for the Cowboys to finish strong, but it’s tough to look at their first season of the post-Marcus Smart era as anything but a success.

Brian Goodman (987 Posts)

Brian Goodman a Big 12 microsite writer. You can follow him on Twitter @BSGoodman.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 10th, 2015 at 12:45 pm by Brian Goodman and is filed under big 12, microsites. Tagged: anthony hickey, feature, lebryan nash, michael cobbins, oklahoma state, phil forte, travis ford. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.