Oklahoma State basketball: Cowboys' win streak — in spirit — started with a loss to OU

A ragged and at times lifeless performance that left Cowboys coach Travis Ford questioning his team's effort, that 77-68 loss was the impetus for OSU's turnaround, sparking enough concern to warrant an intensity check that spurred improved play and this impressive streak, the program's longest since 2004, when that Eddie Sutton team went all the way to the Final Four.

“After we lost that game, we went back, had some early morning practices,” said Cowboys captain Markel Brown. “And we looked at ourselves in the mirror.

“We knew we were better than that. So we took a different approach that we were going to be an aggressive team.”

Ford gave his team its usual day off the Sunday following that setback in Norman, then turned up the heat, ordering 6 a.m. practices and even a few two-a-days.

“Which I've never done in the middle of the season,” Ford said. “We got back like it was the first week of practice, and got their attention a little bit.

“It's as down as I've been on our basketball team, after that game. It's not because we lost, because I thought we got beat by a good team that day. It's because I thought we did not perform the way we needed to perform.

“We tried to change the mentality a little bit.”

Ford said that day was the first time he'd seen these Cowboys fail to fire. Still, he didn't want it to start a trend.

“With a young team,” he said, “you've got to grab it real quick.”

To their credit, the Cowboys didn't bristle at Ford's demands. They answered them.

“They weren't happy with themselves,” Ford said. “It doesn't do any good for just me to be unhappy. They need to be unhappy themselves when they don't play well. And they were.