Oklahoma State With Opportunity for Huge Upset at No. 1 Arizona
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Oklahoma State has a golden opportunity coming up.
After beating No. 16 BYU in Stillwater earlier this week, Cowboy basketball is in the best spot it’s been in since conference play began. While the Pokes are still far from a lock to make the NCAA Tournament, they are back on the bubble and ready to prove they belong on the right side of that bubble.
While the Cougars’ loss in Stillwater marked their third straight and could be a sign that they aren’t quite as good as once imagined, it’s still a significant game for OSU’s resume. The first quad 1 win of the season for OSU, as Steve Lutz noted after the game, the Cowboys have plenty of opportunities on the horizon to add some premier wins to their tournament case.
Most notably, the Cowboys have a chance to get what might be the best win of the college basketball season on Saturday when they face No. 1 Arizona on the road. The Wildcats enter that matchup still unbeaten and ready to compete for a national title in March.
For OSU to get a win against a team like Arizona, it will need to play near-perfect ball on both sides of the floor. Of course, OSU has shown it can create plenty of offense, but getting some more consistent defense, which OSU showed flashes of against BYU, could be the difference between a quality loss and a season-defining win.
As expected, OSU will go into that game as a clear underdog, with DraftKings listing the Cowboys as 21.5-point underdogs in Tucson. For the Cowboys to win, it will take just about everything good they’ve shown all season in the same game.
Of course, if the Cowboys can get hot from beyond the arc or string together some defensive stops for long stretches, the chances of pulling the upset get a bit higher. While OSU effectively needs everything to go its way to win a road game against the top team in the country, there should be some hope that the Cowboys can pull it off, given that they’re beginning to look like a much more complete team.
It won’t be easy by any means for OSU to get its best win of the season this weekend, but the opportunity to cement its status as a tournament team will be there for the taking.
Game odds refresh periodically and are subject to change.
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Ivan is a sports media student at Oklahoma State University. He has covered OSU athletics since 2022 and also covers the OKC Thunder for Inside The Thunder and Thunderous Intentions.