Mar. 27—Mike Boynton was less than a week removed from the Oklahoma State men’s basketball season coming to an earlier-than-expected close when he sat down to recap the five months of hoops leading up to that very moment.

The takeaway, one he first shared after the Cowboys’ loss to North Texas on March 21 in the NIT quarterfinals and doubled down on late Monday morning, was simple.

“There’s a duality. You can acknowledge the shortcomings but also acknowledge the accomplishments at the same time,” Boynton said. “And, ultimately, it’s my job to make sure that there are more accomplishments than shortcomings moving forward.”

Those accomplishments include eight wins in, statistically, one of the toughest conferences that college basketball has ever offered, with three of them being on the road. The Cowboys were the top overall seed in the NIT. They recorded a three-game sweep over rival Oklahoma for the first time since the 1964-65 season.

But OSU also had 10 losses in that same conference. The Pokes’ season, while impacted by injuries to junior forward Moussa Cisse and senior guard Avery Anderson III, ended shy of the NIT semifinals in Las Vegas. And a pair of nonconference losses to Southern Illinois and UCF kept the Cowboys out of March Madness.

“Fell short of our ultimate team goals, which is obviously playing in the NCAA Tournament and — then not just getting there — having a team that’s capable of having success,” Boynton said. “There were a lot of reasons why that happened. Some of it was outside our control, but there were several things we could have done better to ensure our position.”

But that campaign is over, and Boynton’s attention will now turn toward trying to put the program’s best foot forward.

The first order of business, Boynton said, was sorting out the roster currently in Stillwater.

Both big man Bernard Kouma and guard Caleb Asberry exhausted their eligibility and will graduate this spring. Everyone else still has at least one more year, whether it be naturally or an extra season granted by the NCAA due to COVID-19 impacting 2021-22.

As of Monday morning, Boynton had an idea of what lies ahead after already holding individual meetings with everyone.

“Each situation is a little bit different in regards to whether they are either capable of being back, or whether it’s in their best interests — or the interests of the program — to be back with us next season,” Boynton said. “Not all of those decisions are necessarily mine or theirs. Some of them are combined.

“I don’t expect everybody that’s eligible to be back, in all candor. But each situation, like I said, will be a little bit different.”

When it comes to addressing what the Cowboys need to find more success next season, Boynton has already gotten to work, taking a deep, deep dive into the transfer portal. That’s the world in which college basketball now exists, he said.

One of the biggest needs, per Boynton, is more playmaking. And, after dealing with the aforementioned injuries to Cisse and Anderson, he wants the roster to be deeper. That’s a goal more attainable this year with the Cowboys only having to burn one scholarship over the next two seasons as part of their NCAA sanctions.

So he’s spent the past week or so submerged in the portal, — looking, searching for the pieces that will make OSU the most complete puzzle it can possibly be heading into this fall. That has meant taking his laptop to his son’s tournament and cramming himself in a corner to watch film in between games. Or having his laptop in front of him while eating dinner.

“It’s all day, every day,” Boynton said.

“Nobody wants to see the program have more success than I do,” he added. “Our staff and I are committed to doing the work necessary to get the job done. ... We’ve already made a lot of contacts. There’s a lot of high-level interest in helping our program get to where we believe it can go. And I look forward to the work ahead of us.”

One thing Boynton and Co. can certainly count on? They’ll welcome what’s expected to be a top-10 recruiting class to Stillwater this summer, headlined by a trio of four-star prospects in Del City’s Brandon Garrison, Justin McBride (Piano, Texas) and Eric Dailey Jr. (IMG Academy), who committed in early January but hasn’t signed yet.

They’ll have another pair of three-star recruits with Jamyron Keller from Killeen, Texas, and in-state product Connor Dow from Broken Arrow.

Garrison, a 6-foot-9 center who dropped 17 points and 16 rebounds to help Del City win the Class 5A title game, can have a similar impact at OSU to the one that Cade Cunningham did, Boynton said. It won’t look the same, of course. But Boynton believes Garrison can impact winning in the same way Cunningham did in getting the Cowboys into the big dance in 2021.

He knows that riding a group of freshmen to the pinnacle of the sport isn’t likely, though. That’s not what the landscape of college basketball is right now. They’ll play their part, sure, but Boynton will spend the seven months between now and the start of next season figuring out how to return the program to where he’s wanted it to be since being hired in March 2017.

“My job is to put a team together that our fans want to support,” Boynton said. “That’s really where my focus is: not on what hasn’t happened, but it’s about making sure that we do everything we can as a staff to put together a team — and then put them in position to play well enough to be relevant in the tournament moving forward.”