Dec. 31—LAWRENCE, Kan. — It took a minute for Oklahoma State men’s basketball coach Mike Boynton to let it out.

Tucked away in a room on the northwest side of Allen Fieldhouse, Boynton settled into his seat before pausing, taking a deep breath and sharing his thoughts on the Cowboys’ 69-67 loss to No. 4 Kansas on Saturday afternoon.

“I wanna certainly give credit to our guys. I thought they came in here expecting to play well enough to win,” Boynton said. “For the most part, we did. We gave ourselves a chance right up there until the end.

“But there are no moral victories.”

Boynton’s correct. A moral victory didn’t help the Cowboys (8-5, 0-1 Big 12 Conference) win their first conference opener since the 2015-16 season. And It didn’t help them notch what would’ve been their most impressive win yet.

But the difference between a moral victory and returning to Stillwater with an upset triumph in hand was razor-thin.

OSU junior guard Bryce Thompson nailed a stepback triple to tie the game at 67 with roughly 14 seconds remaining. Before the Cowboys could get set in their defense, the Jayhawks (12-1, 1-0 Big 12) responded with a pick-and-roll that left 6-foot-1 guard John-Michael Wright matched up with Kansas 6-foot-7 forward KJ Adams.

Still, the Pokes had a chance. In fact, they had a few of them — both before and after Adams’ go-ahead bucket over Wright.

Trailing by a single point with 32.7 seconds remaining in Allen Fieldhouse, Boynton called his last timeout to draw up a response to a leadgrabbing 3-pointer from Jayhawks forward Kevin McCullar just moments prior.

A few seconds later, Wright found himself on the backend of a pick-and-pop that left him standing alone beyond the arc before letting it fly. Miss.

“I didn’t really expect to be that open. I think that threw me off my rhythm a little bit,” said Wright, who finished with a season-high 19 points. “Those are looks we practice. I just gotta knock ‘em down.”

Immediately following Adams’ bucket, with no timeouts remaining, Cowboys guard Avery Anderson III tried to drive the length of the floor in only a handful of seconds. And he did before being tripped up and watching the ball hit off of a Kansas defender and out of bounds.

The subsequent inbounds pass worked, too — or so it seemed.

Thompson peeled away from his defender, circling back toward the bucket and having what appeared to be a wide-open layup to send the game to overtime. But McCullar recovered, swatting Thompson’s shot out of bounds before the Jayhawks disrupted the ensuing inbounds play and drained the remaining 0.3 seconds.

“Kevin McCullar made a great defensive play,” Boynton said. “He’s a really good defensive player.”

That was a sequence the Cowboys never expected to be in, though. They didn’t expect it to come down to the final seconds, and it isn’t because they had to bounce back from some clobbering issued by a team expected to contend for the national championship.

It’s the exact opposite, actually.

The Cowboys gave the Jayhawks their best 20 minutes of basketball thus far to start the game. At the break, OSU was holding onto a commanding 45-30 lead, an advantage built by the Pokes playing the way they’ve hoped — but have struggled — to throughout the first month and a half of the season.

Thompson, who transferred to OSU from Kansas after the 2020-21 season, scored 14 of his season-high 23 points before the break. Wright added 14 before the intermission, too. The Cowboys went 55 percent from the field, including 9 of 18 from deep, to flip the script on their previous offensive woes.

And, of course, they defended Kansas with a swagger that forced the Jayhawks into 11 first-half turnovers that resulted in 20 points. That’s what OSU has been able to hang its hat on, entering Saturday having held its opponents to a meager 61.5 points per contest — a figure good enough for 32nd in the country.

“We played a pretty good first half. Made some mistakes, but for the most part, played aggressive on both ends of the court, and that really disrupted what they were doing,” Boynton said. “Then, obviously, they flipped the aggressiveness. They became the aggressors.”

After nearly reaching the half-century mark before the break, the Cowboys mustered only 5 points in the first 12 minutes of the second half, and Kansas had a lot to do with that.

The Jayhawks clawed their way back into the game with a defensive adjustment that negated the Cowboys’ efforts on the perimeter. OSU was 4 of 11 from beyond the arc in the second, and the Pokes were outscored 39-22 throughout the final 20 minutes.

But they, of course, were never out of it, with Kansas’ biggest lead of the game never growing larger than 3 points. The Cowboys were always within striking distance.

“You can’t sustain that over 20 minutes,” Jayhawks coach Bill Self said of his team’s momentum. “Then it became a basketball game. It was kind of like a heavyweight fight, so, fortunately, we got the last blow.”

Yes, Boynton was correct when he said there aren’t any moral victories. But if there were, a one-possession loss to the defending national champs in one of college basketball’s most raucous environments would surely count.

The Cowboys will have a chance to pick up their first Big 12 win of the season when they host West Virginia at 6 p.m. Monday in Gallagher-Iba Arena. Approaching the midway point in the season, OSU is projected to be the only Big 12 team left out of the NCAA Tournament.

A win against the Mountaineers would go a long way toward the Cowboys getting back on track and building their resume for March. But Self, who’s led Kansas to a pair of the program’s six national titles, thinks they’ve already begun.

“This league is a monster,” Self said. “We played other teams this year that are predicted to go to the tournament, and nobody can’t tell me that Oklahoma State is as good or better than most of those teams.”