Despite most thinking he would return for one more season, Oklahoma State fired men’s basketball coach Mike Boynton, the school announced Thursday.
Boynton’s seven-year tenure as OSU’s coach came to an end after the Cowboys finished their season a dismal 12-20 and 13th in the Big 12. In his seven seasons, Boynton reached the NCAA tournament just once, doing so behind the heroics of eventual top NBA draft pick Cade Cunningham. Boynton’s departure spells the end of a frustrating, controversial, often times confusing, seven years, and allows OSU to move onto a different coach, one who it feels can restore the Cowboys to their past glory.
In a few years, when Boynton’s time as OSU’s coach can be looked at without recency bias, two things will become clear. First off, Boynton was a stand-up guy from the day he took the job to the day he was let go. He always answered the tough questions, and seemed to share a genuine connection with his student-athletes. After that, the NCAA investigation into the OSU program comes into view.
Throughout the first five years of his time in Stillwater, a dark cloud loomed over OSU’s program. During Boynton’s one year as an assistant under then-coach Brad Underwood, the Cowboys allegedly illegally paid a prospective recruit. After only one season, Underwood left for Illinois, and left a mess with him. Boynton was the one tasked with cleaning up that mess, and it undeniably put him behind the eight-ball for the first few years of his career.
Boynton was able to recruit good classes despite the looming punishment from the NCAA. Objectively speaking, Boynton’s ability to get good prospects to Stillwater while facing the investigation was impressive, but he was never able to turn highly-ranked prospects into high numbers of wins, outside of his lone year with Cunningham.
The NCAA eventually handed down a one-year postseason ban to OSU, a punishment that was deemed excessive by many pundits around the college basketball world. When you take into consideration that over those first four seasons, Boynton was dealing with being an unexpected first-time coach during the first, and a postseason ban during the fourth, it is easy to see why some think he deserved another year.
Boynton was also publicly critical of OSU’s NIL capabilities during his final season. He pointed to the losses of program-developed guys like Avery Anderson (TCU), and Rondel Walker (TCU) as the results of inadequate NIL contributions for his program.
So, in short, during his time in Stillwater, Boynton dealt with postseason bans, an ongoing NCAA investigation ruling over everything that had anything to do with the program for the first four years, and a lackluster NIL collective.
All these things are legible excuses, but the reality of the situation is simple — winning, even at a low-level, cures all. Boynton, for all his strengths, was never able to win anything of consequence. He made the Big 12 championship game once and was easily defeated by Texas, and he made the tournament one time, where he lost to 12 seeded Oregon State after defeating 13 seed Liberty in the first round.
As unfair as it may seem, Boynton just didn’t do enough to show OSU, a once proud program, that he deserved to be kept around any longer.
Boynton is likely to land on his feet as an elite assistant whenever he decides he wants to coach again, and he may end up being a good head coach one day, but the proof was in the pudding at Oklahoma State — it was time to move on, for the sake of both parties.
