Junior guard Byron Eaton leads the Big 12 in fouls and is tied for seventh in the nation. Eaton has 76 personal fouls this season and has fouled out of five games. The Big 12’s top four players in fouls committed are Cowboys.
Ibrahima Thomas had waited all season for Bedlam.
Thomas, the Cowboys’ freshman center, started Monday night and had his first experience in the rivalry game against the Sooners.
Unfortunately, he didn’t get to experience it for long.
Thomas fouled out of the game in only 12 minutes played, becoming the first casualty in a game filled with Cowboy fouls.
After committing only seven fouls in the first half, OSU suddenly found itself helpless to do anything but foul as the Sooners repeatedly went inside in the second half.
The Cowboys finished with 24 personal fouls and sent OU to the line 30 times in the second half.
“They did a good job of getting the ball inside,” coach Sean Sutton said. “That’s the strength of their team. They did a good job in the second half of pounding the ball at us. They attacked us and they got to the line.”
Sutton said the Cowboy post players played well, but ultimately, they could do nothing else against the Griffin brothers, Blake and Taylor.
The Griffins alone took more free throws than the entire Cowboy team.
The game was far from an isolated incident. A fouling epidemic has hit the Cowboys hard and hasn’t let up all season.
OSU leads the Big 12 in fouls, and after Monday’s game, the conference’s top four players in fouls committed were all Cowboys (Byron Eaton, Terrel Harris, Thomas and Marcus Dove).
Eaton, the conference leader, said there is a strategy to some of the fouls he commits.
“For me, I hate to let guys get dunks,” Eaton said. “If you’re on the road and a guy gets a dunk, that can really get the crowd going; it’s a big momentum builder.”
Sutton said the high number of fouls is a result of his team trying to play good defense, and Eaton represents that risk-reward nature of that aggressiveness.
Eaton is tied for seventh in the nation in fouls, but he’s also only five away from breaking Ivan McFarlin’s OSU record for career steals in just his junior year.
“We try to play aggressive defense, and when you do that, you’re going to foul some, but we get a lot of unnecessary fouls because of guys reaching,” Sutton said. “I want them to be aggressive, but at the same time, they’ve got to stay smart and understand that there’s certain things the officials are going to call.”
In spite of the fouls, the Cowboys’ aggressive defense has paid off recently.
Although OSU is in the midst of a five-game losing streak, the team has held its last three opponents below their season scoring average.
Still, Sutton can’t help but be frustrated at times when his players pick up cheap fouls, and Thomas has been getting up these fouls more quickly than anyone.
A week before Bedlam, Thomas picked up four fouls in 13 minutes against Texas.
“We’ve showed him on film, he picks two or three fouls every game that are just cheap fouls,” Sutton said. “He’s got to be more disciplined.
“He’s got to move his feet; it seems like he’s always bumping a guard coming off a screen. He’s just got to be smarter about not picking up those fouls.”
Harris said that many of his fouls come out of frustration.
“When I miss a shot or something on offense, I just get aggressive on defense, sometimes overly aggressive,” he said. “I guess I need anger management or something.”
Sutton said it will be key for his players to learn to stay out of foul trouble as the season goes on, and Harris agreed.
“We’ve got to get our hands out of the cookie jar,” Harris said.
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