What Mike Boynton hopes Oklahoma State basketball team learned ahead of date with Kansas

STILLWATER — Mike Boynton’s Oklahoma State men’s basketball team found it difficult to make its own good fortune early in the season.

Now, it just feels like the world is piling on.

After dropping an overtime decision to Baylor in its Big 12 opener a little over a week ago, OSU (8-8, 0-3 Big 12) was handed a pair of difficult losses on the road at Texas Tech and Iowa State in the past week.

Yet the difficult part started before the Cowboys even left Stillwater.

Both trips included flight delays that resulted in the team arriving on game day, rather than the day before, as is customary. For Iowa State, the start time had to be delayed more than two hours to accommodate OSU’s late arrival.

And what awaits the Pokes in their return to Gallagher-Iba Arena?

An 8 p.m. Tuesday tipoff against the third-ranked Kansas Jayhawks.

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While Boynton expressed frustration with the travel delays, as well as with how the rescheduling process was managed, he made no excuses for his team’s performance in the 66-42 loss at Iowa State.

“Iowa State played great, we played (crappy),” Boynton said. “When that happens in this league, there’s not a whole lot you can expect in terms of having an opportunity to win. Disappointed in our lack of fight, really.”

On Monday, the Cowboys were unable to fly out for their game against Texas Tech in Lubbock because of high winds. That resulted in traveling the day of the game.

Then on Friday, arctic weather in Des Moines, Iowa, prevented the team from leaving Stillwater once again. And it got worse on Saturday.

OSU made the bus trip to Oklahoma City only to be told their plane had been grounded for maintenance. They learned of another plane at the Norman airport, but soon were told that plane could not fly because there was no de-icing equipment to clear it for travel.

Shortly after that, the team was told a plane was available in OKC, but there was no flight crew.

The Cowboys eventually left around 2 p.m. Saturday for a game that was initially set for a 5 p.m. tipoff. It eventually started at 7:15 p.m.

Boynton expressed frustration with the minimal delay, considering the lengths OSU went to in making the trip.

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“I thought there was an opportunity to maybe do something a little bit different, have a little more flexibility in making this game happen,” Boynton said. “We tried everything we could to get here.

“But at the same time, we came up here, we played the game, we didn’t play well enough to win. They did.”

Boynton acknowledged how changing the scheduled start time of a game impacts fans and television broadcasts, but felt the decision to start the game with a delay of just over two hours caused undue difficulty for his players.

“We’re talking about kids,” Boynton said. “We gotta start putting them back at the forefront of the way we make decisions in regard to what we’re doing with them.”

Boynton acknowledged the idea of moving the game to Sunday, and the other issues that would have caused. Both teams have games scheduled for Tuesday night, with Iowa State playing at BYU, meaning further weather concerns could impact that trip.

“We had a bunch of bad options, in all honesty,” Boynton said. “We took the best of a lot of bad options.”

Ultimately, Boynton hopes experiences like Saturday build the character of his players for the future, even if the benefits don’t come on the court this season.

“I’m not an excuse guy,” Boynton said. “Life's hard, man. Bad stuff happens. What you do is you show up when you have an opportunity to do your job and you do it to the best of your ability. They need to learn that now, because most of them are gonna have families one day, and they need to understand that’s part of the responsibility of being a man.”

OSU vs. Kansas

TIPOFF: 8 p.m. Tuesday at Gallagher-Iba Arena in Stillwater (ESPN)

This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Oklahoma State basketball seeks first Big 12 win vs. Kansas Jayhawks