Boynton Has The Pokes Pointin' Up
Kansas State fans still want Brad Underwood as their next head coach, but that is now an unrealistic prospect -- at least for the remainder of this decade.
Oklahoma State fans merely wanted Underwood to stay in Stillwater. He coached the Cowboys to the 2017 NCAA Tournament and very nearly got the Pokes to beat the Michigan team which came within one basket of making the Elite Eight. After too many years of seeing Travis Ford get outcoached in March, Oklahoma State had a bench boss worth trusting.
Underwood had a place where he could win at a higher level... but not where he got paid at a rate he felt he deserved.
Underwood traded Oklahoma State orange for Illinois orange, moving to Champaign after one season in the Big 12 to revive the Illini... and collect a much fatter paycheck.
Oklahoma State athletic director Mike Holder was left holding the bag. With an abrupt and unexpected transition jolting the program, plucking a high-end coach was not a reasonable aspiration purely as a consequence of stability. A high-rising outsider could not have looked at Stillwater as an attractive place to be under that set of circumstances. Then, of course, even if an outsider might have wanted to coach at Oklahoma State a year ago, the pay would not have been great.
Holder had very few options once Underwood left. His decision to hire assistant coach Mike Boynton wasn't an unenlightened move, but the mess Holder created enabled Underwood to leave, which certainly rated as a failure given Underwood's coaching acumen and rising stature in the industry. Boynton wasn't a bad hire, but his presence as Oklahoma State's head coach was not Plan A. It was not the result the school or Holder intended to create when the Pokes took Michigan to the wire in Indianapolis.
Boynton was thrown into a difficult situation exacerbated by the loss (to the NBA) of Jawun Evans, a dynamic, do-everything guard who carried the 2016-2017 Pokes on his back. Boynton accepted the lowest salary of any Big 12 head coach. Kansas State might have the most dissatisfied fan base in the Big 12, but Oklahoma State had the most dysfunctional coaching situation in the league entering this season.
Boynton has changed all of that in a flash.
After beating West Virginia in Morgantown on Saturday, Oklahoma State has road wins over both the Mountaineers and the Kansas Jayhawks -- and on consecutive Saturdays, no less. The Cowboys might not reach the .500 mark in Big 12 play, but in a league this deep and good, that is not an impediment to making the NCAA Tournament. The Pokes have accumulated enough high-end wins -- especially on the road -- that in a weak bubble environment, their odds of making the Dance (while hardly guaranteed) are better than even-money.
People in the Big 12 are marveling -- not without reason -- at the job Steve Prohm is doing with Iowa State's gutted-out roster after an exodus of veteran high-end talent. Boynton, sans Evans, lacks Prohm's extensive head coaching resume and credentials. Boynton also lacks Prohm's experience as a major head coach. Even if the most optimistic Boynton admirer or evaluator thought the 36-year-old (35 when hired last year) had considerable coaching talent, the mere reality of being a first-year head coach at a Power 5 program in a very deep league figured to provide rough sledding, to the extent that this season for Oklahoma State would be a transition year, not a year in which the NCAAs were a realistic aspiration.
Boynton is doing what Prohm is doing at Iowa State... but on a far greater scale.
As another point of comparison, Underwood is struggling mightily in HIS transition year at Illinois. That's not an indictment of his chops, but a reflection of how hard it is for ESTABLISHED and proven coaches to win in first seasons at new schools. Without Evans, Underwood would have had a very hard time matching the level of coaching Boynton has delivered to Oklahoma State this season.
Is Boynton a star in the making? Who knows? That topic is better left untouched. Save it for next year if the Brooklyn native is still flourishing.
For now, let's simply appreciate that a situation which seemed beyond repair -- or at the very least, critically deficient -- has been turned into a stable, durable, thriving operation one year later.
The key insight: Men such as Larry Brown or Lon Kruger or John Beilein can rescue programs, but one doesn't have to own a large reputation to become an adept quick-fix artist.
Mike Boynton -- without any prior head coaching experience in college basketball -- has fixed the leaky, creaky components of Oklahoma State hoops in Year 1.
https://www.patreon.com/posts/16937860
Kansas State fans still want Brad Underwood as their next head coach, but that is now an unrealistic prospect -- at least for the remainder of this decade.
Oklahoma State fans merely wanted Underwood to stay in Stillwater. He coached the Cowboys to the 2017 NCAA Tournament and very nearly got the Pokes to beat the Michigan team which came within one basket of making the Elite Eight. After too many years of seeing Travis Ford get outcoached in March, Oklahoma State had a bench boss worth trusting.
Underwood had a place where he could win at a higher level... but not where he got paid at a rate he felt he deserved.
Underwood traded Oklahoma State orange for Illinois orange, moving to Champaign after one season in the Big 12 to revive the Illini... and collect a much fatter paycheck.
Oklahoma State athletic director Mike Holder was left holding the bag. With an abrupt and unexpected transition jolting the program, plucking a high-end coach was not a reasonable aspiration purely as a consequence of stability. A high-rising outsider could not have looked at Stillwater as an attractive place to be under that set of circumstances. Then, of course, even if an outsider might have wanted to coach at Oklahoma State a year ago, the pay would not have been great.
Holder had very few options once Underwood left. His decision to hire assistant coach Mike Boynton wasn't an unenlightened move, but the mess Holder created enabled Underwood to leave, which certainly rated as a failure given Underwood's coaching acumen and rising stature in the industry. Boynton wasn't a bad hire, but his presence as Oklahoma State's head coach was not Plan A. It was not the result the school or Holder intended to create when the Pokes took Michigan to the wire in Indianapolis.
Boynton was thrown into a difficult situation exacerbated by the loss (to the NBA) of Jawun Evans, a dynamic, do-everything guard who carried the 2016-2017 Pokes on his back. Boynton accepted the lowest salary of any Big 12 head coach. Kansas State might have the most dissatisfied fan base in the Big 12, but Oklahoma State had the most dysfunctional coaching situation in the league entering this season.
Boynton has changed all of that in a flash.
After beating West Virginia in Morgantown on Saturday, Oklahoma State has road wins over both the Mountaineers and the Kansas Jayhawks -- and on consecutive Saturdays, no less. The Cowboys might not reach the .500 mark in Big 12 play, but in a league this deep and good, that is not an impediment to making the NCAA Tournament. The Pokes have accumulated enough high-end wins -- especially on the road -- that in a weak bubble environment, their odds of making the Dance (while hardly guaranteed) are better than even-money.
People in the Big 12 are marveling -- not without reason -- at the job Steve Prohm is doing with Iowa State's gutted-out roster after an exodus of veteran high-end talent. Boynton, sans Evans, lacks Prohm's extensive head coaching resume and credentials. Boynton also lacks Prohm's experience as a major head coach. Even if the most optimistic Boynton admirer or evaluator thought the 36-year-old (35 when hired last year) had considerable coaching talent, the mere reality of being a first-year head coach at a Power 5 program in a very deep league figured to provide rough sledding, to the extent that this season for Oklahoma State would be a transition year, not a year in which the NCAAs were a realistic aspiration.
Boynton is doing what Prohm is doing at Iowa State... but on a far greater scale.
As another point of comparison, Underwood is struggling mightily in HIS transition year at Illinois. That's not an indictment of his chops, but a reflection of how hard it is for ESTABLISHED and proven coaches to win in first seasons at new schools. Without Evans, Underwood would have had a very hard time matching the level of coaching Boynton has delivered to Oklahoma State this season.
Is Boynton a star in the making? Who knows? That topic is better left untouched. Save it for next year if the Brooklyn native is still flourishing.
For now, let's simply appreciate that a situation which seemed beyond repair -- or at the very least, critically deficient -- has been turned into a stable, durable, thriving operation one year later.
The key insight: Men such as Larry Brown or Lon Kruger or John Beilein can rescue programs, but one doesn't have to own a large reputation to become an adept quick-fix artist.
Mike Boynton -- without any prior head coaching experience in college basketball -- has fixed the leaky, creaky components of Oklahoma State hoops in Year 1.
https://www.patreon.com/posts/16937860
