Oklahoma State Basketball: 10 candidates to replace Mike Boynton as Head Coach

Change has come in Stillwater, a Oklahoma has announced the firing of Mike Boynton after seven seasons as head coach. Boynton originally joined the Cowboys in 2016 as an assistant coach and was promoted to the top job after one season, with mixed results during his tenure.

Born in New York, Boynton was a talented point guard who spent his entire collegiate career at South Carolina, finishing that career with a trip to the 2004 NCAA Tournament game. Shortly after his playing days ended he got into coaching, accepting a spot as a graduate manager at Furman.

He’s now been a collegiate coach for twenty years, bouncing around in the early days of his career. He assisted Buzz Peterson at Coastal Carolina and Mike Young at Wofford before returning to his alma mater in 2008. He’d stay with the Gamecocks for five seasons, spending his final year under new head coach Frank Martin and his staff.

Boynton’s next four seasons came as an assistant under Brad Underwood, one of his fellow assistants at South Carolina. He’d help Underwood build Stephen F. Austin in a mid-major monster before jumping to Oklahoma State. When Underwood fled for Illinois in 2017, Boynton was promoted to the top job.

He got off to a relatively successful start, leading the Cowboys to the quarterfinals of the NIT in this first season, though he never won more than 21 games in a season. The highlight of his coaching tenure was luring future #1 overall pick Cade Cunningham to campus. Oklahoma State finished 5th in the Big 12 and advanced to the second round of the NCAA Tournament during Cunningham’s lone collegiate season.

Unfortunately for Boynton, sustained success never came during his seven years at the helm. That trip in 2021 was Oklahoma State’s only NCAA Tournament appearance and was also their only season above .500 in conference play. The Big 12 has turned into a significantly difficult league and Oklahoma State just was not a consistent winner in recent years.

The Cowboys’ decision to move on isn’t a major surprise and came shortly after the conclusion of a 12-20 season, tying an earlier mark for Boynton’s worst record in a season. Oklahoma State just hasn’t had the consistency in recent years and need a new voice and direction for this program. He’ll certainly be remembered for his work with Cunningham, but a few solid months are what stands out from seven years in Stillwater.

Today we’ll be examining a number of potential candidates that Oklahoma State might target in their head coaching search. It’s their first search of this kind in nearly a decade and many options are available for the Cowboys. Keeping in mind that this is just a selection of names and that other candidates are out there as well, let’s get right into the ten names we have in mind.