On Wednesday night, it will be a battle in Stillwater as the No. 16 BYU Cougars (17-4) travel to Oklahoma to take on the Cowboys (15-6).
The Cougars hold a 6-4 series lead against Oklahoma State in a matchup that has historically favored the home team, as each host has won its home game, including BYU’s win in Salt Lake City in 2003, dating back over 50 years.
Something will have to give, as a BYU win would be its first in Stillwater since 1971, while a loss would end its 22-game win streak against non-ranked opponents.
Sitting in the middle of the Big 12 standings, Oklahoma State continues to search for a statement win that would elevate the Cowboys into the conference’s upper tier. Despite a strong overall record, their struggles against ranked opponents have kept them from being viewed as a true contender.
Oklahoma State has faced four ranked teams this season, posting a 1-3 record in those matchups and losing the three defeats by an average of 15.6 points, including back-to-back losses to Iowa State in January.
Even so, the Cowboys enter Wednesday at 15-6, having already matched their 2024-25 regular season win total with 10 games still to play which shows progress under head coach Steve Lutz now in his second year.
With BYU coming to Stillwater, Oklahoma State will be looking not only to protect its home floor from another ranked loss, but also to avoid consecutive home losses for the first time in the Lutz era.
Offensively, the Cowboys are ranked ninth of 16 in the Big 12 averaging 77.3 points a game against conference opponents.
Oklahoma State’s offense runs through Anthony Roy and Parsa Fallah, who have become the Cowboys’ go-to scoring options this season. Roy leads the team at 17.8 points per game and has been a consistent threat shooting 46 percent from three-point range.
Roy, a senior who's been on four different teams during his collegiate career is coming off his biggest game of the season where he orchestrated an 81-69 win in Salt Lake City against the Utes where he logged 36 minutes and put up 26 points, including five of eight from the three.
Fallah, in his first year as a Cowboy, provides a strong presence inside, averaging just over 15 points per game while shooting 56 percent from the field. The Iranian-born forward has struggled recently, scoring an average of seven points over his last three games. He’ll be looking to return to the form he showed in December and January, when he consistently shot over 50 percent and averaged around 20 points per game.
Together, Roy and Fallah give the Cowboys a reliable 1–2 punch as they prepare to host BYU on Wednesday night, an opponent with three players ranked in the top seven of the Big 12 in offensive statistics.
Defensively is where Oklahoma State has really struggled this season, allowing an average of 81.3 points per game — just a hair ahead of Utah, which ranks last in the conference at 81.5.
Even before Big 12 play, the Cowboys had trouble containing nonconference opponents like Northwestern, CSUF, and South Florida, often needing high-scoring efforts to pull out wins.
If OSU is looking for a spark in the final ten games of the season, it will need a repeat of the type of defensive performance it showed against Utah, where it held the Utes to just 69 points.
So far, the Cowboys are 2-1 in conference play when holding opponents under 80, but can they do it again against a BYU team eager to prove itself after two back-to-back come-from-behind efforts came up short?
On Wednesday at 7 p.m. MST on Fox Sports 1, BYU will either try to avoid losing three in a row for the first time since last January or clinch its first win in Stillwater since 1971 and keep its win streak against non-conference teams intact.