"I think next year's team has got a chance to be really good,” he said last week in Kansas City, then again in his office at Gallagher-Iba Arena on Wednesday afternoon.
The second-year coach is going about his business as usual after OSU's season ended with a first-round NIT loss on Tuesday night. Right after returning from Carbondale, Ill., the OSU staff met Wednesday afternoon to lay out a recruiting plan for the next week. Then he taped his weekly coaches show.
While Sutton is talking and acting like he will be back as OSU's head coach next season, his future remains uncertain. Oklahoma State athletic director Mike Holder said he would address Sutton's status once the season was over, but he declined comment through an athletic department spokesman on Wednesday. No timetable has been set for a decision.
OSU finished the season 17-16, and Sutton is now 39-29 in his two years since formally taking over as head coach. In December Holder gave football coach Mike Gundy a one-year extension after a 6-6 regular season (and an 18-19 career mark), and in the middle of the football coaches' second season Holder told reporters Gundy would get five years. The athletic director has since said he regretted the statement, and would no longer address coaches' performances midseason.
Sutton has three years remaining on a five-year contract.
In Sutton's two years in charge the Cowboys have had, in some ways, mirror-opposite seasons. In 2006-07 OSU got off to a tremendous start but collapsed down the stretch, thanks in part to a shortage of players. In 2007-08 OSU struggled early, losing five non-conference games and falling to 2-7 early in league play, but charged back and won five straight late in the season with a crop of new players.
"I think this team that we have coming back really made a lot of progress and a lot of improvement,” Sutton said.
Sutton said the staff needs to get at least one or two recruits in the spring that can be instant contributors, but losing just Marcus Dove and Tyler Hatch he thinks next year's team can get out of its current NIT rut.
"I think next year's team ought to be able to compete for the Big 12 Championship and certainly be in great position to make the NCAA Tournament,” Sutton said.
Sutton said the most important thing is to change players' mindsets about the postseason. He pointed back to "an NIT mentality” that existed when he first arrived at OSU as a player.
"Corey Williams and Darwyn Alexander and Byron Houston, the core of that team, they had been to the NIT two years in a row and my dad (former coach Eddie Sutton), early, sensed that the guys just had an NIT mentality,” Sutton said. ”He said ‘You think you have had a good season just because you make the NIT. That's a bunch of crap.
”So he kind of hammered that all season long that ‘I'm going to get that NIT mentality out of you guys' head.' They made the NCAA Tournament and they got a taste of what it was like and our program really took off from there after that first season. But I've got a lot of confidence that next year's team will be in the NCAA Tournament as long as things go the way I think they will.”
