Mike Boynton Addresses Premature Ending to the Season

Oklahoma State head basketball coach Mike Boynton addressed the cancellation of the remainder of the 2020 basketball season with local media.

STILLWATER – Thursday, March 12, 2020: The day the sports world stood still. It’s been a rather strange/hectic/awful 48 hours for sports fans across the world due to the spread of COVID-19. Everything started with conferences limiting access to the conference tournaments to just essential personnel, then the NBA suspending the remainder of the season.

That’s when things really started to ramp up. Professional leagues all over the world started to suspend or cancel events and entire seasons for the time being. The NCAA announced on Thursday the cancelation of the NCAA tournament, as well as the remainder of the winter and spring championships.

It was heartbreaking news for the majority of the seniors across the country that’s going pro in something other than sports, possibly including four of the seniors on the Oklahoma State men’s basketball team.

I would imagine that Cameron McGriff, Lindy Waters III, Thomas Dziagwa and Jonathan Laurent are going to try their hands at professional ball, whatever level that might be. Whether it’s overseas, or trying their hand at the G-League, I think those four guys have a chance at the next level.

What’s heartbreaking is these four guys, along with the rest of Oklahoma State basketball, were playing the best basketball in the conference.

“I do believe we were playing as well as anybody in our conference, probably outside the team we were gonna face yesterday,” Mike Boynton said Friday morning. “Tall talk, certainly if we could have found a way to get a win yesterday (we) would have felt pretty good about getting through the weekend. So, I don’t know. It’s really hard to get there. I don’t love how their careers ended. In some ways you kind of feel unfulfilled, because you figure, I said to you guys, you want them to be able to write the ending of their story. In many ways I feel like that was the thing that they were robbed of. At least being able to have a tangible impact on how their careers came to an end, that’s the thing that will probably stick with me for a while is they didn’t get a chance to be beat for their careers to end. Whether we would have been a Cinderella or not, who knows what would have happened.”

Something that makes this situation a little easier is the possibility of an extra year of eligibility. Jeff Goodman reported Friday morning that the “NCAA’s Council Coordination Committee has agreed to grant relief for the use of a season of competition or student-athletes who have participated in spring sports.”

So, that’s great for all the Oklahoma State spring athletes, including baseball and softball, but Goodman also reported that the ‘Committee will also discuss issues for winter sport student-athletes.’

“I was talking about all winter and spring sports,” explained Boynton before Goodman’s report. “And I understand there’s a handful of guys whose seasons may have completed already. And what’s the harm in letting some kid have another opportunity in college, and giving them the experience. The truth is, in basketball specifically, all these kids play for the opportunity to be on the biggest stage with the most watched event, probably all of sports maybe outside the Super Bowl, for the next three weeks.

“I think about our kids on our team, but I also think about Kristian Doolittle, and Dezmon Bane, and Xavier Sneed, guys who are in our league. I watched Prentiss Nixon plays as good of a basketball as he’s played all year against us, because that’s what you see from seniors this time of year.

“Yeah, I’m talking about basketball, my seniors, I’m talking about seniors at other places, but I’m also talking about spring sports. I watched our softball team last weekend, really, really good team. They’ve got some seniors on there who I think would become household names and have an opportunity to go on and do great things, our baseball team, our golf team, our tennis teams’ were supposed to host the National Championships this year. All the sports and all these kids, at the end of the day that’s what I do this for.”

It's also important to note there doesn’t have to be a rule change in order to accommodate the seniors that would take advantage of another chance.

“For a one-time exception, in my mind it’s a no-brainer,” Boynton said. “The kids have to want to come back. They have to want to be students still. There’s going to be some guys who say, ‘No thanks.’ And that’s OK. That’s their prerogative. I think for those kids who want to do it again, we should give them a chance. If that means we’re up to 15 scholarships next year, if somebody’s up to 19, then so what? It’s one year. We can figure it out.”

Yes, it hasn’t been the best 48 hours for sports fans. But the Big 12 will be reevaluating on March 29 whether the spring sports will resume, and it appears that all these seniors that have worked their entire careers, and in most cases lives, will get one more chance to achieve the ultimate goal of hoisting a championship trophy.