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Why is a box score on Travis Ford's mirror?
Published: 1/17/2012 10:48 AM
Last Modified: 1/17/2012 10:48 AM

When Oklahoma State basketball coach Travis Ford looks in the mirror, this is what he sees: Baylor 106, OSU 65.

That was the final score of the Cowboys’ most recent game. It was the most lopsided loss the program has absorbed since 1932. And it’s not something Ford wants his players to forget.

“Put the stat sheet in your locker and hang it up every day to see,” he said. “Use it as a challenge. Use it as fuel.”

Ford is holding himself to the same standard. He said he attached a box score from the OSU-Baylor game to his mirror at home because he wants to see it every morning.

“I put it right where I brush my teeth,” he said. “But that’s my mentality. I told my team that’s my mentality. I had to overachieve my whole life. That’s what fuels me.”

What buttons should coaches choose to push when a young and depth-thin team (five of OSU’s eight available players are freshmen) gets rocked?

Ford said one of his coaches wanted to, at least temporarily, kick players out of the locker room. And Ford didn’t go for it.

“If that’s what you need to movitate you, that’s not going to work,” he said.

“What motivates you should be the stat sheet. It should be the film. It should be I don’t care how old you are or how weak you are right now or how small you think you might be. That doesn’t matter. It doesn’t mean you are going to win every game, but you sure can compete every game.”

Ford said his team didn’t exhibit much “fight” during the last eight or 10 minutes of the Baylor game. He said his team had a “very spirited” film session when reviewing the game. “There are so many things in that game that nobody else saw, but film will show that we need to respond from.”

Ford said Baylor deserves a lot of credit. The third-ranked Bears (unbeaten before a Monday loss at Kansas) were “on” and made 15-of-29 3-pointers while playing in front of the largest home crowd of the season.

“Even if we played well, we weren’t going to beat Baylor on that day,” he said.

Ford referenced a story told to him by a mentor. Rick Pitino said when he coached in the NBA, he knew there were going to be five or six games a season that you knew you just weren’t going to win because everything is going to go against you. At the college level, maybe there are one or two of those games.

“I’m hoping (the Baylor game) was one of those occasions,” Ford said. “But with that said, I don’t want our guys just to (embrace that). I don’t want them to forget it.”

Ford said he told his players it’s not about winning and losing at this point. “It’s about how are you playing?”

It’s forgivable to put your best foot forward and lose to a team that played better. It’s another thing entirely to do what the Cowboys did in Waco.


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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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