NCAA MEN'S BASKETBALL CHAMPIONSHIP: SECOND ROUND - OREGON ST. VS OKLAHOMA ST.

March 21, 2021

Mike Boynton

Hinkle Fieldhouse

Oklahoma State Cowboys

Postgame Media Conference

Oregon State 80, Oklahoma State 70

MIKE BOYNTON: First of all, congratulations to Coach Tinkle and his staff and their players. They're on a heck of a ride right now. You've seen this thing happen with teams before. They figure it out. Sometimes it's a little later than people expected, but they're doing some really good things. They're playing really good basketball, and that continued tonight. Good luck to them as they move forward.

Really proud of our friendship we've developed over the last couple years. Happy that they're continuing on.

Obviously really disappointed that we didn't win. That was the goal, is to continue on. But I'm super proud of my kids, of our staff, and of what we did. This year was certainly a challenge in many ways, but we overcame a lot, did many things no one expected we could do. So I'm thankful for those guys, and our seniors specifically, look forward to the opportunity to get back to work.

THE MODERATOR: Questions.

Q. I wanted to ask, what did you see out of your team in the second half in terms of the grit, them being able to come back close?

MIKE BOYNTON: I saw Oklahoma State basketball. I saw a little dose. We didn't get enough of that throughout the entire 40 minutes. But we showed the type of fight that I want this program to always have. I was proud of the way we did try to give ourselves a chance.

Every time we made it close, though, Oregon State had an answer. That's what they've been doing here for the last several weeks, shooting the ball well. They made a lot of free throws obviously.

Yeah, I was just really proud of our guys for not hanging their heads and kind of running away from the moment. They faced it. We just came up short.

Q. From day one till now, how have you seen this group grow?

MIKE BOYNTON: Yeah, that's what I just told them in the locker room is, we came in at some point in late June, maybe early July, and literally every person in our locker room is better today than they were then. That's a testament to our great staff. This year obviously it included our medical team, having to get through all the medical protocols to be able to play. I'm thankful for our leadership, our administration, the leadership in our league, and for Dan Gavitt and his team for being able to pull this event off.

Again, I think it's a great sign that we're doing things the right way, and this is something that we'll learn from.

Q. How special has it been this year being able to coach Cade Cunningham?

MIKE BOYNTON: I'm not sure I really have words, to be honest. He's a special dude. He's going to be a really good player at the next level, whoever gets him. I certainly look forward to cheering him on and watching him on TV a lot because I know he's going to be a guy that has a long career.

But he's made me better. He allowed me to coach him. He allowed me to hold him accountable. Because of that experience, I've had a chance to have a special season. We just came up a little short of our ultimate goals, but we did a lot of really good things, and a lot of it was because of his presence and his willingness to be one of the guys.

Q. How should Cowboy fans remember Cade Cunningham as a Cowboy?

MIKE BOYNTON: One of the greats. I've said this before, maybe you have a national audience so it's worth repeating, I feel kind of bad that more people haven't been able to see him, particularly at our home games, but even on the road.

He is a once-in-a-lifetime person, not just player, person. For all the things that were possible in terms of his approach to this, I couldn't have asked for better. He just wanted to be coached. He wanted to be challenged. He wanted to be put in position to have success. He wanted to do everything he could to help. It was never about his draft status, it was never about his points, it was never about anything that was personal. Everything he did every day was poured into our program.

I hope he had as good of an experience playing as I did coaching him.

Q. How will you remember this team specifically?

MIKE BOYNTON: I think you said something about how I'll remember this team. It wasn't clear. You weren't that clear. I'll take a stab at it.

I'll remember this team as a team that raised the bar for me and our program. In my mind as we move forward, this is where the rest of the teams that I get to coach, they've got to live up to. My job is to make sure we continue to recruit guys, then develop them once they get here, to be in a position where we're playing meaningful basketball in this tournament for many years to come.

I'm thankful for -- sent out a message the other day thanking the first group of seniors I coached, and last year's seniors. This team is going to be special because in many ways they overcame a lot. They could have kind of went their own way back in the summer, but they all came together to try to get to this point. We wanted to go further. But they really sent a message about what Oklahoma State basketball can be and what our expectations of it should be moving forward.

Q. The last time Oklahoma State lost a tournament game, the coach was gone shortly after. Your salary has been a hot topic. What can you say about your off-season?

MIKE BOYNTON: I'm having a hard time hearing you. Again, I think I'm making out your question about my personal career and what's next?

I don't know. I mean, obviously I'm very, very thankful to Mike Holder. What you saw out there today, although in defeat, was a representative of what he believed I could do as the leader of this program. So his belief in me will never be something that I take for granted or overlook.

In terms of anything else, salary talks and all that stuff, we're not having that kind of conversation at this point. If that's something that's necessary, then at the appropriate time we'll have those discussions. Obviously my focus was on trying to get this team a win tonight. As we move forward and get back to Stillwater, I'm sure when the appropriate time is to have discussions about those things, it will happen.

In the meantime I just want to console these guys and try to help them through what they're feeling right now, which is really difficult.

Q. Cade all season, because your team is so young, has had to balance his talents of being able to score with distributing and bringing the team along. He hit a stride at the end of the season and through the Big 12 tournament. Can you give us a window into where some struggles may have come tonight. It seemed like that delicate balance was a little bit off.

MIKE BOYNTON: Yeah, I mean, I think first and foremost you got to give credit to the other team. Wayne Tinkle is a hell of a coach. He's a great man, first and foremost. I wasn't inside, I wasn't in the building when they were going through their struggles early in the year. They figured it out and they're playing really, really good basketball. Got to give them credit, first and foremost. It's not always about what we did wrong. The other team played well. They played with a lot of confidence, shooting the ball well, sharing it, they're playing with a lot of joy.

I thought tonight we weren't in sync as much as I would have liked, then it caused both Avery and Cade to kind of have to try to make more individual plays, which they're capable of, but it wasn't a great recipe for us in today's game.

Q. Small picture and a big picture. After Cade hits the three to cut it to three, those next three possessions, you guys got some decent looks, but he didn't touch the ball. Two minutes went by there. It's all retrospect now, but did you feel like things kind of swung there after you got so close?

MIKE BOYNTON: Yeah, I think they called a timeout there, is that what you're talking about?

Q. Yes.

MIKE BOYNTON: We actually were being pretty aggressive in our press. We got too aggressive a couple times and fouled, that stymied our rhythm getting out in transition. Then they did a pretty good job to try to get to him a little earlier and force him to play against two guys.

In that situation, he is who he is. He's always going to try to make the right play. He made a couple really good driving kick reads and the shots didn't fall. Sometimes that happens.

But I tell you what, we wouldn't be here without what he did this year. He helped those other guys get better. He made me a better coach, there's no question about it. I'm thankful that I had that opportunity to coach him because, again, he's truly one of the all-time great people I've ever been around. At 19 years old, that's pretty special for him to be up there already.

Q. In the two games you played there in Indy, your offense was not great. I think you guys missed 47 shots tonight. Defense you could say a lot of great things, especially two nights ago. Offense just seemed to really have some struggles. What do you chalk that up to?

MIKE BOYNTON: Well, we didn't get a whole lot of production on our interior, to be perfectly frank. That makes it easier for people to load up on our perimeter guys. So when you don't have a whole lot of versatility, it makes getting shots where you want to a little bit more difficult.

What we got to do is continue to make our guys better. We got to get better post scoring on a consistent basis. That's our job as coaches, is to coach those things and develop them. But you can't change it, right, in a three-day period in the tournament. That's something that you got to work on in the off-season. That will be a big focus of ours going into our spring workouts.

Q. I'm not asking you to talk about officials. How tough was it tonight with the foul situation? Did you just not adjust? What did you see there?

MIKE BOYNTON: To be honest, a lot of stuff's going through my mind right now. But I thought it was a pretty aggressively called game both ways. Both teams were shooting in the bonus for a long time in the second half. Then when you're playing catch-up, it makes it harder. A lot of times the assumption is you're being overly aggressive and fouling too much.

I mean, I don't know. I tend to give those guys the benefit of the doubt. I think they work really hard. I think they try to get the best guys in the country from all the leagues in this event. At the end of the day we just didn't play well enough. We didn't make shots, we didn't share the ball well enough. We didn't get the stops when we really, really needed to like we have over the last two weeks to really put ourselves over the hump.

Q. Do you plan on everyone coming back but Cade?

MIKE BOYNTON: I don't know. I mean, it's probably hard, to be honest. I don't want to speak for the kids. Those conversations are always personal. In the next couple weeks I'll sit down with everybody. Always, as soon as the season is over, it's about what's best for each guy. It's no different than what we went through last summer. Every guy will have an opportunity to talk about what they want, what they expect. My job is to try to help them achieve that.

For the guys that will return, my job is to help them understand what the expectations will be for them. For the guys that decide not to, my job is to try to help them get to a place where they feel like they can achieve those goals.

Q. The first half was probably one of your worst halves of the season, to be frank with you a little bit. What really stood out to you in the first half? What was the biggest issue?

MIKE BOYNTON: We played on our heels a lot. That's just not who we are. It's not how we've had success. That was the most shocking part to me is that we were kind of slow to the ball on rebounding. We didn't really get out in transition. I don't think we had any transition points. We played reactionary basketball. In this event, you got to go get it. It's win or go home.

Again, the feeling you have when it's over is a pretty tough one to deal with. That was the thing I probably was most disappointed about. I don't know if I would argue with you that was our worst half, because again, we hadn't played that poorly in a long time. Tonight we dug ourselves a hole we just couldn't come out of.

Q. Sometimes a coach dives straight into the emotions of losing in the tournament before the analytics as to why it happened. The locker room after a game like tonight can be tough for a young coach like yourself to navigate. Can you share with me, what you feel comfortable sharing, but how was that experience afterwards with your kids?

MIKE BOYNTON: Yeah, you know, I'm pretty transparent. You know that. It was a difficult moment. First of all, just because by the nature of how we as a staff operates. This isn't a deal we bring these guys in, we try to use them to win games. We want to win, that's the objective every time we take the floor. But we really try to invest in these kids as people. When you do that, you become like family. Like it really becomes like they're your kids.

To see their faces of disappointment. The truth of the matter is, even if it's just Cade, our team will not be the same next year. So this will be the last time that these guys get a chance to compete. The thing I told them was, the thing I'm most disappointed in is I don't get to coach 'em again as a group. I don't get to see them at practice tomorrow.

Now, I still get to have them as a part of my life for a long time, but in this environment it's difficult. So I told them all that I loved them. They all made me a better coach. I think I'm a better father because I'm around these guys every day. I hope that these guys see somebody in me that they can try to model their life after. I hope I'm somebody that they want to kind of aspire to be like, because at the end of the day I want to be a role model for these guys. I want to be somebody that is a good example of what their families want them to become.

When you approach it that way, it does become a difficult thing to say, Guys, this is it, this is the end of the road for this group.

But at some point it will wear off, and we'll reflect on the good things that happen. Because we did do a lot of really good things this year.

THE MODERATOR: Thank you.