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Question: Can OSU return to NCAA Tournament next season?
Published: 3/15/2012 2:35 PM
Last Modified: 3/15/2012 2:43 PM

A second consecutive NCAA Tournament minus the Oklahoma State Cowboys is under way.

Will the NCAA Tournament drought stretch to three years in a row?

OSU loses only Keiton Page from the first Cowboy squad to post a losing record in 24 years.

But Jean-Paul Olukemi is thinking 25 instead of 24.

Olukemi, a starting forward, missed the spring semester with a torn ACL (he says his rehab is going along just fine, and thanks for asking). He watched OSU’s season come to an end with a quarterfinal loss to Missouri in the Big 12 Tournament and, afterward, I asked him what his expectation level is for the program next season.

Said Olukemi, “I think we should be top 25.”

Top 25? Isn’t that overly optimistic since your team went 15-18?

“But we have all the pieces,” Olukemi said. “We’ve got the right pieces, the right tools. We’ve got the right players coming here. We’ve got the foundation, basically. It might have been a losing season, but it was a gaining season as far as players gaining experience and playing in big games and knowing how hard you have to play every game. They have that experience now. You insert some people in. It’s a good foundation.”

Olukemi didn’t say this, but I will: Never mind that the Cowboys return a McDonald’s All-American (Le’Bryan Nash) and they’ve got another (Marcus Smart) on the way. In order to have the kind of bounceback season that will allow OSU to get back in the NCAA Tournament business, the point guard position must be fortified and someone needs to provide consistent interior scoring.

If the Cowboys go 0-for-2 in those areas, they’ll return (plus) a lot of experience and (minus) a lot of the same problems.


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Tulsa World sports writer Jimmie Tramel is a former class president at Locust Grove High School. He graduated magna cum laude from Northeastern State University with a journalism degree and, while attending college, was sports editor of the Pryor Daily Times. He joined the Tulsa World on Oct. 17, 1989, the same day an earthquake struck the World Series. He is the OSU basketball beat writer and a columnist and feature writer during football season. In 2007, he wrote a book about Oklahoma State football with former Cowboy coach Pat Jones.

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