Cowgirl Basketball Season an Undeniable Success Despite Struggles

OSU didn't achieve all of its goals, but this season was far from a failure.

Mar 23, 2026; Los Angeles, CA, USA; Oklahoma State Cowboys head coach Jacie Hoyt in the first half against the UCLA Bruins at Pauley Pavilion. Mandatory Credit: Jayne Kamin-Oncea-Imagn Images | Jayne Kamin-Oncea-Imagn Images

Oklahoma State’s season is officially over, and it was quite the roller coaster in Stillwater.

Over the course of the past few months, expectations changed rapidly for OSU women’s basketball, but there’s no doubt that Jacie Hoyt capped off another successful season with the program.

After beating Princeton in the first round for the program’s first NCAA Tournament win under Jacie Hoyt, the Cowgirls were expectedly taken out by No. 1 seed UCLA in the second round on Monday night to end a season that once held so much promise.

Coming into the 2025-26 season, OSU was ranked and expected to compete for the Big 12 title and even potentially a host seed in the NCAA Tournament. Unfortunately for the Cowgirls, they couldn’t take care of business against beatable opponents far too many times and ended up falling back to a familiar spot in the national picture.

While there is certainly some disappointment to result from OSU’s shortcomings throughout the season, this was still arguably the best season under Hoyt and another building block toward something special. After all, the Cowgirls are set up for long-term success under their head coach, so an up-and-down season, however crushing it might feel at the time, is simply a bump in the road in the big picture.

Of course, it’s hard to call anything about this season disappointing when OSU finally secured a win in the big dance under Hoyt after a couple of crushing losses in 2023 and 2025. The postseason is far from the only measure of success for a program, but a win in the NCAA Tournament for a team in OSU’s situation makes it nearly impossible to call this season an underperformance.

Sure, there were several bumps along the way for Hoyt and company, most notably a last-second loss in the Big 12 Tournament to Kansas State as OSU hoped to redeem some of its conference struggles from the regular season. However, this OSU team showed resiliency at every turn and was never interested in backing down from a challenge.

That fight was on full display on Monday night as OSU won the second half against UCLA after digging itself too deep a hole to climb out of in the first two quarters. While it’s certainly sad in the moment for the players and coaches, this season will be one that’s looked back on fondly, even if the high-end expectations didn’t quite come to fruition.