Dec. 7—Oklahoma State men’s basketball had a prime opportunity to get back on track during its nonconference slate when hosting Sam Houston on Tuesday evening.

The Cowboys entered the contest on the heels of a road loss to then-No. 8 UConn, playing the Huskies, who are now the No. 5-ranked team in the country, close before being outscored by 20 points in the final seven minutes of the first half.

The Bearkats entered as the No. 7 team in the first NET rankings of the season, which were released on Monday afternoon. It marked their second trip to the Sooner State in a month after traveling to Norman on opening night and leaving with a win over Oklahoma.

But OSU put a halt to Sam Houston’s scorching start to the year, beating the Bearkats 65-51 in Gallagher-Iba Arena.

“That’s a pretty damn good basketball team. They’re gonna win a lot of games,” Cowboys coach Mike Boynton said of Sam Houston. “Thankful that our guys stuck with our game plan and were able to come out with a win that I think we’ll carry for a while.”

The Cowboys (6-3) were led by junior guard Bryce Thompson, who eventually finished with a game-high 17 points, doing so by hitting shots from everywhere on the floor.

Thompson scored OSU’s first 8 points, helping the Pokes jump out to an early lead over the Bearkats (7-2). The first Cowboy other than Thompson to score was senior forward Kalib Boone, who got on the board following a dunk with 12 minutes left in the first half.

The Cowboys, trailing 13-10 with roughly nine minutes to go before the break, had gone stagnant on offense. Needing a bucket, Thompson provided another. His triple from the right wing tied the game and gave OSU life.

Then, 30 seconds later, Thompson hit another.

It sparked a run for the Cowboys, who outscored the Bearkats 19-7 throughout the final eight minutes of the first half en route to a 32-20 lead at the break.

“It was big. We need that,” Thompson said. “That’s a good team we just played. To be able to stretch that lead out a little bit, be able to breathe and just kind of settle in — it was good.”

The second half paled in comparison to what OSU was for the closing minutes of the first half, though.

The Cowboys turned the ball over on their first three possessions out of the break, forcing Boynton to call a timeout. He didn’t deliver any message, he said. In fact, he was too frustrated to say anything to the first unit.

It allowed Sam Houston to creep back into the game, something that OSU has allowed opponents to do at times this season.

So, he put an entirely different lineup on the floor.

“We couldn’t let that lead up,” Thompson said. “It was simple as that.”

The Pokes weathered the storm from the Bearkats, who got within 6 points with roughly 14 minutes remaining in the game. OSU pulled away, though, eventually leading by as many as 19 with two minutes left.

The Cowboys smothered the Bearkats, holding them to their lowest scoring output of the season. OSU limited Sam Houston to 17 of 49 (34.7 percent) from the field, including 6 of 21 (28.6 percent) from beyond the arc.

Boynton said the defensive showcase was in part due to the Cowboys’ efforts on the perimeter. And it was in part due to 7-foot-1 junior forward Moussa Cisse, who tallied four blocks and impacted countless other shots in the paint.

“I enjoy blocking shots,” said Cisse, who leads the Big 12 Conference in shots blocked. “I don’t know if (second place) will be able to catch up, because I’m not stopping.”

After bouncing back with a win over, statistically, currently one of the best opponents in the country, the Cowboys will turn around and play one of their final nonconference games of the year against Virginia Tech on Sunday in Brooklyn, New York.

A win would draw attention to OSU, which hasn’t gotten off to the most ideal start a month into the season.

But if those are the Cowboys’ aspirations, if they want to string together back-to-back wins with one over the Hokies (8-1), then they’ll have to be everything they were toward the end of the first half — not what they were for the first few moments of the second.

“There’s a four- to five-minute segment of every game that we kind of lose our minds,” Boynton said. “If we can shore that up, we can take the next step to becoming a team that’s nationally relevant.”