It wasn’t.
Saturday evening, the third of three planes carrying the OSU contingent crashed, killing all 10 on board.
Two of those killed — Nate Fleming and Daniel Lawson — were OSU basketball players.
Tuesday, for the first time, two OSU basketball players — junior forward Fredrik Jönzén and junior forward Andre Williams — spoke to the media about the loss of their teammates.
Williams said the loss of two of his teammates has “been a long process.
“These have been the longest three days of my life,” Williams said.
And understandably so. Not only did Williams lose a teammate, he lost a roommate.
“My first step is just being able to sleep in my apartment, just knowing when I get up in the morning that Dan isn’t going to be there.
Jönzén lost his roommate as well in Fleming.
“He was a walk-on to this team, and he really enjoyed playing basketball with us,” Jönzén said.
“He was always out there every day in practice working his butt off and he was a great friend to me too. That’s how I’m going to remember him.”
Earlier in the day, all the current members of the basketball team — along with former teammates Brian Montonati, Joe Adkins and Desmond Mason - gathered in the basketball offices and joined their coaches to talk about the friends they all lost.
OSU coach Eddie Sutton said it’s been a very traumatic experience for all for the team, and the best way to get through it all was to talk about the good times they had with the people who are gone.
“There’s been a lot of happy times we’ve shared together,” Sutton said, “and I think this is part of the healing process that I’ve tried to drive forward with the team that they need to remember this and they need to talk about this.
“I think they’ve been really good about bonding together and talking to each other, not only when their coaches are with them, but when they are by themselves.”
Jönzén said the meeting was a good thing to take part in.
“We shared some memories and we all laughed,” Jönzén said. “It comes in spurts, all the emotions. You mix it with tears and you mix it with laughter, and I think today was a great moment when we got to share some good memories as a team.”
During the press conference, Williams shared one of his first moments at OSU. It was a moment that included both Lawson and Fleming.
“I roomed both of them my first year here,” Williams said.
“It was interesting in Bennett with me, Dan and Nate in one room.
“But the funniest thing was when I first got to school here, I walked into the room and they kept telling me my roommates were Daniel Lawson and Nate Fleming. And I walked in, and it’s a guy from Detroit and a little tennis player from Edmond. Then Joe (Adkins) came in and somebody said something, and Nate said ‘no, I play tennis.’ And Joe just looked at him again and said ‘oh, we got us a tennis player now.’ Those were the first two people I really met here, and I’ll never forget them.”
This afternoon, Williams will speak at the memorial in front of a packed Gallagher-Iba Arena and share his thoughts and memories of Fleming and Lawson.
“Personally, I’m going to go in and just show the families how much we care about them,” Williams said. “This is going to be hard, but we’ve got to show their families that they were part of this family and they’ll always be a part of our family. It’s going to be great to go in there and I know OSU is going to support us.
“And it’s going to be a little bit of closure — it won’t be totally closed until we find out what happened with the plane and why it went down — but this is going to be a great
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