Cowboys Need Seniors to Lead

The storylines out of Fort Worth from Saturday read like a stirring tribute to TCU.

“Strong Defense…”

“… off to its best start in 21 years, rolling past Oklahoma State.”

And that’s an understandable take, south of the Red River.

Locally, however, it was a different spin.

Offensive issues; shooting struggles, “woes” even, continue.

Yes, woes. And wow.

But why?

“We’re a better shooting team than we’ve shot,” Cowboys coach Mike Boynton said after OSU was stifled by TCU 52-40. “We’ve got some psychological issues right now.”

Yikes. That’s nothing easy to admit.

And it gets worse. The guys who should be steadying the squad, pulling the Cowboys up and out of their sinking status – the team’s seniors – are mired deepest in the funk.

That’s a problem.

And unless and until Lindy Waters, Thomas Dziagwa and Cam McGriff find their mojo and start shooting straight, things aren’t getting better, even as we swear things can’t get any worse.

Consider:

In Big 12 games only, and sure, it’s early, the Cowboys rank last in scoring at 43.7 points per game. For comparison, Kansas State, ninth in scoring, averages 56, and league-leading Iowa State sits at 73.5.

OSU is last in field goal percentage, making just 29.4 percent of its shots, and last in 3-point percentage at 18.2.

The Cowboys are also last in scoring margin at minus-20.3. Again, for comparison, next-worse Kansas State is at minus-7.0.

Did I say Yikes?

McGriff is the only OSU player among the top 25 in league scoring, averaging 10.0 per game in the No. 20 spot.

Now, it’s early yet, with only three Big 12 games in the books. But the Cowboys haven’t played Baylor and Kansas yet, and as we know, and as TCU proved, there are no comfortable matchups in the Big 12.

Texas is next on the schedule, Wednesday night in Gallagher-Iba Arena. The Longhorns, who had been struggling, righted themselves some with a Saturday home win over Oklahoma. Maybe the Cowboys can take a cue from the Horns, and their coach Shaka Smart.

“It’s like, ‘Hey, we have to be better than this,’” Smart told the media of a conversation with his squad before the OU game. “‘There’s no one outside of this room that’s going to create that. That has to come from us.’”

So it is with the Cowboys, namely Waters, McGriff and Dziagwa.

This projected as a breakthrough season for the Boynton era, with five returning starters, led by the veterans, along with boosted roster depth. Teams without stars can still thrive if they have strong seniors, and OSU figured to have them in place.

But after a solid start to the season, the Cowboys and their vets have slumped.

Waters is shooting a career-low 38.4 percent from the floor; 25.0 percent in conference play. He’s shooting just 30.2 percent from 3-point range; 19.0 percent in three Big 12 games. And he’s the team’s most capable scorer.

The numbers for McGriff (40.9 overall/33.0 Big 12; 22.5/20.0 3-point) and Dziagwa (38.7/18.2 and 39.2/20.0) are equally startling.

Saturday at TCU, which was picked for last in the Big 12, although it’s played better than that, Waters went 0-for-8 from the floor and 0-for-5 from long range, while Dziagwa went 0-for-5, all from deep. Only McGriff was OK, shooting 4-of-9 and 1-of-3.

More bad numbers: OSU went stretches of 7:04 and 6:48 without scoring. Combined, that’s 13:52 of clock, or more than 1/3 of the game.

Can the Cowboys pull out of this and look more like the team that beat Syracuse and routed Ole Miss and won at Houston? Sure.

But all eyes are on the seniors. And we’re talking all eyes. The fans. Boynton. Their younger teammates. They're looking for the seniors to lead.

“We have enough guys that shoot shots and they practice on their shots enough, when they shoot ‘em, they should feel confident that it’s going in every time,” Cowboys point guard Isaac Likekele said Saturday.

“Once we get back to that, I feel like we’re going to be perfectly fine.”