Much has been made of the draw Oregon received from the NCAA Tournament selection committee.
People have been asking how a team that had the second-best regular season record and won the Pac-12 Conference Tournament got placed as the last team from the Pac-12 to make the field of 68. How does a team that beat UCLA twice and finished ranked in the AP Top 25 poll get a 12-seed while UCLA and Arizona get six-seeds?
Others, including the Oregon team itself, have been downplaying the snub, calling it a blessing that the Ducks get to play a first-round game on the West Coast, where it is likely there will be a high turnout of UO faithful.
The real issue at hand here isn’t the number next to Oregon’s name or the venue the Ducks will play in. Nope, it is the team that comes from Stillwater, Oklahoma. The Cowboys of Oklahoma State are a formidable opponent awaiting Oregon on Thursday at HP Pavilion in San Jose, Calif.
Oklahoma State has one bad loss on its resume, but other than an early non-conference loss to lowly Virginia Tech, this is a team that has lost only to good, mostly great teams and beaten just as many.
Two of the four No. 1 seeds in the March Madness bracket were defeaters of Oklahoma State; Gonzaga beat the Cowboys in December, while Kansas took two overtimes to best the Cowboys. Those two losses came by a combined two points.
Oklahoma State beat every team in the Big 12 at least once this season, splitting the season series with six teams in the conference, five of which were good enough to make the NCAA Tournament. Oklahoma State lost to Kansas State (four seed), Iowa State (10 seed), Oklahoma (10 seed) and Baylor (one of the last teams left out of the bracket) as well as Kansas (one seed). While five conference losses isn’t the best scenario for a team, the Cowboys know what it feels like to win against daunting opponents, having beat another tournament team in North Carolina State in a preseason tourney, as well as Kansas at one of the nation’s most hostile environments in Lawrence.
Oklahoma State is coming off a disappointing semifinal loss to Kansas State in the Big 12 Tournament, but before that the Cowboys had won 12 of their last 14, four of those wins against the aforementioned fellow tournament teams from the Big 12.
Leading the Cowboys is an absolute freshman sensation, Marcus Smart. A physically gifted point guard at 6-foot-4, 225-pounds, Smart finds success all over the court, scoring 15.4 points per game, 5.7 rebounds and 4.2 assists. Put into context, that would make him the highest scorer on the team if he were a part of Oregon, second in rebounds (yes, the 6-foot-4 Smart grabs more board than Oregon’s 6-foot-11 center Tony Woods) and tops in assists.
If his offensive stats weren’t enough, Smart was named to the Big 12’s All-Defensive Team. His combination of size, athleticism and awareness on both ends of the floor has many projecting him as the No. 1 pick in this year’s NBA Draft.
Oklahoma State isn’t a one trick-cowboy(s) though, as Smart is joined with a Marianas Trench-deep backcourt. Markel Brown averages 15.3 points per game, Le’Bryan Nash gets 14.1 and Smart’s high school teammate Phil Forte notches 10.4. All of them are guards and all of them average more than 25 minutes per game.
If people truly believe Oregon deserved a higher seed in the tournament, then here is the chance to prove it. The selection committee has given the Ducks the difficult test out of the gate that could break the Ducks, or in fact, make them. The one thing Oregon has going for them? The Ducks are very used to a team in orange and black wanting nothing more than to take out the team from Eugene.