Cowboys, Aggies renew basketball rivalry Sunday afternoon in GIA

TEXAS A&M (2-0) at -/rv OKLAHOMA STATE (1-0)
Sunday, Nov. 9 | 1:05 p.m. CT
Stillwater, Okla. | Gallagher Iba Arena (13,611)
 
Tickets: okstate.com/tickets
Watch: ESPN2 (Mark Neely & King McClure)
Listen: Cowboy Radio Network (Dave Hunziker & John Holcomb)
Stats: okstate.statbroadcast.com
Series: OSU leads 32-18 (15-5 in Stillwater)
Last: Jan. 25, 2020 in College Station, Texas (OSU, 73-62)
OSU Coach: Steve Lutz – 2nd Season at OSU (18-18), 5th Overall (87-53)
TAMU Coach: Bucky McMillan – 1st Season at TAMU (2-0), 6th Overall (101-52)
 
 
It’s an “Orange Out” inside Gallagher-Iba Arena on Sunday afternoon as the Oklahoma State Cowboys welcome in former Big 12 rival Texas A&M for a 1 p.m. CT tipoff on ESPN2.
 
Tickets:
Purchase seats at okstate.com/tickets or by calling 877-ALL-4-OSU.
 
Promotions:
The game is part of a doubleheader at GIA, as the Cowgirls take on ORU at 4 p.m. One ticket grants admission to both games.
 
Watch:
Mark Neely and King McClure have the call on ESPN2 with streaming available to verified subscribers through the ESPN app.
 
Listen:
Dave Hunziker and John Holcomb describe the action on stations across the Cowboy Radio Network, including 93.7 FM in Stillwater, 96.1 FM in Oklahoma City and 1170 AM in Tulsa. Or tune in worldwide via the Varsity Sports App.
 
Live Stats:
Follow live statistics from a variety of OSU sports via StatBroadcast. Visit okstate.statbroadcast.com to view the latest games.
 
Follow Us:
Go behind the scenes with Cowboy Basketball on X (@OSUMBB), Instagram (@OSUMBB) and Facebook (CowboyBasketball). Read all the latest news at okstate.com and watch highlights, interviews and more at YouTube.com/OSUAthletics.
 
 
Opening Tips:

• OSU got its season off to a winning start on Tuesday with a 95-71 victory over Oral Roberts. Vyctorius Miller scored 21 points, Christian Coleman (15 pts, 11 reb) tallied a double-double, and Kanye Clary dished out eight assists for the Cowboys, who led 50-46 at the break before buckling down defensively in a 45-25 second half. The Golden Eagles shot 22% after halftime and 35% for the game.
• Four Cowboys were in inactive on Tuesday, including guards Anthony Roy and Isaiah Coleman, who combined for 56 of OSU’s 97 points in an October exhibition win over preseason No. 20 Auburn.
• Roy – a senior transfer from Green Bay — is on the watch list for the Jerry West National Shooting Guard of the Year Award.
• Robert Jennings II is the only rotation player back from last year’s NIT quarterfinalist. He started all 35 games.
• The Cowboys have 12 newcomers on the roster, including seven Division I transfers who combined to average more than 94 points for their respective teams last year.
• OSU received a vote in the preseason edition of the USA Today Coaches Poll — its first in either of the major top-25 lists since February 2023.
• The Cowboys are predicted to finish 12th out of 16 teams in the Big 12 Conference race.
• OSU is 32-18 all-time against Texas A&M (15-5 in Stillwater). This will be the Aggies’ first visit to GIA since the 2011-12 season (their last as Big 12 members). They’ve split two other meetings since, most recently on Jan. 25, 2020 when the Cowboys won a Big 12-SEC Challenge matchup in College Station.
• OSU is 14-4 at GIA under second-year head coach Steve Lutz. Last year the Cowboys posted their highest home winning percentage in more than a decade (13-4, .765). Three of the losses came to NET top-10 opponents and the other in the NIT quarterfinals.
• The Cowboys have won 10 consecutive non-conference regular season contests on the white maple, dating back to December 2023.
• This is the second in a stretch of six OSU home games to start the regular season, continuing Wednesday against Prairie View A&M (7 p.m., ESPN+).

 
Last Time on Cowboy Basketball:
Nov. 4 | OSU 95, Oral Roberts 71

• Oklahoma State followed up a 50-point first half with a strong second-half defensive showing to put away Oral Roberts in the season opener for both sides.
• The Cowboys led 50-46 at halftime but scored the first eight points of the second half and held the Golden Eagles to 22% shooting the rest of the way.
• Vyctorius Miller led a group of five double-figure scorers with a career-high 21 points.
• Christian Coleman collected 15 points and 11 boards.
• Kanye Clary (8) and Jaylen Curry (6) combined for 14 of the Cowboys’ 18 assists.

 
ORU Leftovers:

• Eight players saw their first action in an OSU uniform on Tuesday. Their 78 points marked the best group debut in OSU history. The previous best was 72 in the 2007-08 opener by a seven-man crew headlined by freshman James Anderson (29).
• Vyctorius Miller (21 points) became just the eighth player to score 20+ in his first OSU game and the first since Cade Cunningham (21 points in 2020).
• Likewise, Ryan Crotty was the first Cowboy freshman since Cunningham to start an opener (and the 18th in the 54 years that freshmen have been immediately eligible).
• Christian Coleman (15 points, 11 rebounds) logged just the tenth debut double-double in OSU history and Kanye Clary tied the mark for most assists (8).
• Coleman was 2-of-5 from beyond the arc — notable considering he attempted just one three-pointer in 72 career games at UAB. Prior to Tuesday, his last make came Jan. 28, 2023 during his time at South Plains Junior College.
• OSU tipped off its 117th season and improved to 1-0 for the 91st time in program history.
• Sophomore Andrija Vukovic totaled 20 points in 11 appearances as a true freshman. Tuesday night he put up a career-high 11 points in 18 minutes.
• The three Cowboy centers (Vukovic, Parsa Fallah and Mekhi Ragland) combined for 26 points and 15 rebounds in roughly 40 minutes.
• OSU was +15 on the glass. 52 boards were the most for a Cowboy team since Feb. 6, 2021 when they collected 53 in a double overtime win over Texas (and the most in regulation since the 2020-21 season opener when they grabbed 54 at UT Arlington).
• ORU’s 12 blocks tied for the most ever by an OSU opponent – 2015 (Texas), 2003 (at Kansas), 1996 (at Arizona St.) and 1994 (at Kansas).
• The 24-point win was OSU’s largest margin of victory in 36 games under Steve Lutz. The previous high was 21 last December at Tulsa.
• The OSU bench outscored ORU’s reserves, 33-15. A year ago, the Cowboys scored a school record 1,070 bench points and their season average (30.6) ranked 13th nationally.
• The Cowboys improved to 13-0 under Lutz when putting at least 80 points on the scoreboard.
• The game featured 85 possessions, the fourth highest in a Division I match up this season (through Friday), per BartTorvik.

 
The Series with Texas A&M:

• Former Big 12 rival Texas A&M returns to Stillwater for the first time since the 2011-12 season as part of a new home-and-home series.
• The Cowboys won the most recent meeting  — a Big 12-SEC Challenge matchup in College Station –- back in January, 2020.
• OSU leads the all-time series 32-18 (15-5 in Stillwater).
• The former Big 12 South Division rivals played an annual home-and-home in every season from 1996-97 to 2011-12 and also met eight times between 1918 and 1925 during OSU’s brief affiliation with the Southwest Conference.

 
Scouting the Aggies:

• Texas A&M – which won 23 games in 2024-25, finished fifth in the SEC standings and reached the second round of the NCAA tournament as a No. 4 seed – looks to continue its success under new head coach Bucky McMillan and 14 new players, including guard Pop Isaacs (a 2024 All-Big 12 Third Team selection at Texas Tech) and forward Mackenzie Mgbako (the 2024 Big Ten Freshman of the Year at Indiana).
• A&M is picked 13th out of 16 in the SEC preseason poll but is also one of 14 teams from that league currently ranked among the top-50 nationally, per KenPom.
• The Aggies started their season with lopsided home wins over Northwestern State and Texas Southern, during which they averaged 101 points on 51.5% shooting, led by Rashaun Agee and Ruben Dominguez (14.0 ppg each), Rylan Griffen (13.5 ppg) and Josh Holloway (12.5 ppg).
• During his five years at Samford, McMillan’s teams annually ranked among the national scoring leaders, averaging as many as 86 points per game during the 2023-24 season.
• Per Synergy, Samford pressed on just under 42% of its defensive possessions last season (third nationally).

 
Matchup Mashup:

• OSU’s Robert Jennings II and Texas A&M’s Pop Isaacs were roommates during their two seasons together at Texas Tech (2022-24).
• San Antonio native Steve Lutz coached his first collegiate road game at Texas A&M’s Reed Arena. His A&M-Corpus Christi Islanders fell 86-65.
• #LutzGo meets “Bucky Ball”. The two head coaches — Lutz and Bucky McMillan — prefer an up-tempo style of play. A far cry from the days of Eddie Sutton and Billy Gillispie. On Feb. 11, 2006, their teams combined for a grand total of 90 points in a rock fight in College Station (still an OSU shot clock era record for fewest combined points). A&M won, 46-44,  on Joseph Jones’ 10-foot leaner with 1 second to play.
• A&M assistant coach Kyle Keller was on the OSU bench that day. The 1990 OSU graduate served on staff under both Eddie and Sean Sutton from 1999-2008.
• A&M assistant coach Frank Haith faced the Cowboys five times during an eight-year run as Tulsa head coach (2014-22).
• Texas A&M guard Ali Dibba visits GIA for the third straight November, wearing a third different uniform. He was a member of the Abilene Christian team that faced the Cowboys in the 2023-24 season opener and returned last season with Southern Illinois.
• T. Boone Pickens, OSU football stadium namesake, played freshman basketball for Texas A&M in 1947. After coaching staff canceled his  $25/month scholarship, Pickens transferred to OSU (then  the Oklahoma A&M Aggies) where he earned a degree in petroleum geology in 1951.
• Pickens was an OSU student during Texas A&M’s only other non-conference basketball visit to Stillwater (Dec. 7, 1949). Coach Henry Iba’s squad rolled to a 55-34 win, using a lineup that included future hall of fame coach Don Haskins at forward.
• Cowboy teams are 4-0 all-time on Nov. 9 with home victories in 2021 (UTA, 88-45), 2019 (Kansas City, 69-51), 2012 (UC Davis, 73-65) and 2007 (Prairie View, 104-48).

 
A Cowboy win would…

• Make them 2-0 for the second straight year and for the 63rd time in 117 seasons.
• Extend their all-time series lead over Texas A&M to 33-18 (16-5 in Stillwater).
• Improve their home record under Steve Lutz to 15-4 (.789), including 7-0 in non-conference regular season contests.
• Boost Lutz’s career record to 88-53 in parts of five seasons as a head coach (19-18 at OSU).
• Make them 874-268 all-time in GIA (now in its 88th season), 306-94 since its 2000 expansion.
• Give them 11 straight non-conference regular season wins inside GIA, dating back to December 2023, and make them 458-60 (.884) all-time.

 
Up Next: Prairie View A&M
Wednesday, Nov. 12 | 7 p.m. CT | ESPN+

• Prairie View A&M returns to Stillwater for the third time in five seasons.
• OSU is 6-0 all-time against the Panthers with all six wins coming by at least 22 points.
• Three-time SWAC Coach of the Year Byron Smith has led PVAMU to three conference titles and a 2019 NCAA Tournament appearance in his first 10 seasons on the job.