For a third consecutive offseason since arriving in Stillwater, Oklahoma State coach Steve Lutz found himself hitting the reset button in April.
Five players were set to graduate and five more opted to transfer out. Excitement had been building around the program, which won 20 games and made the NIT in 2025-26. But to keep the momentum going, Lutz had his work cut out for him once again.
His debut roster in 2024-25 was composed of a whopping 12 newcomers. Last season’s team included seven transfers, all of whom assumed prominent roles. With only four guys returning for the 2026-27 campaign, Lutz needed to put together a quality portal class this spring.
He has learned from each of the program’s rebuilds thus far, refining his approach. His strategy this time around was more balanced, intentional and meticulous. The staff relied heavily on Profile, a behavioral assessment tool that Illinois used to construct its 2025-26 Final Four team. The result is an overhauled roster that Lutz is very optimistic about, one that has the potential to snap OSU’s five-year NCAA Tournament drought. “This year’s team seems to be much more focused on the processes of winning and those sorts of things,” Lutz tells Hoops HQ. “And focused on teamwork. You can already tell the way they’re wired based on our research.”
Lutz took over at Oklahoma State in April 2024 after making the Big Dance in his first three seasons as a head coach (twice at Texas A&M-Corpus Christi, once at Western Kentucky). He had to scramble to assemble his first team with the portal already open and a limited NIL budget, forcing him to take some risks. The Cowboys improved their win total from the prior season but still finished under .500 (17-18) and placed 12th in the Big 12.
That group struggled to score the ball, ranking 148th nationally in offensive efficiency. So Lutz set out to add offensive firepower via the portal in 2025. He succeeded, signing five transfers who averaged at least 11 points, including the country’s leading scorer Anthony Roy. Offensive production spiked as a result (83.9 points per game), but the drop off on the other end was significant. The 2025-26 Cowboys plummeted to 158th in defensive rating and surrendered an abysmal 85.6 points per contest in Big 12 play, which led to a 6-12 conference record. “Year One to Year Two was a little bit too reactive,” Lutz admits. “With this third recruiting class, I just feel like we have a better balance of both.”
Oklahoma State went into this offseason with some key pieces already in place. Kanye Clary, a 6-foot junior guard who averaged 10.6 points and 4.6 assists, re-committed in early April. During the fall, Lutz also landed a trio of four-star prospects in the class of 2026: 6-foot-8 forward Latrell Allmond, 6-foot-6 wing Jalen Montonati and 6-foot-5 guard Parker Robinson. Allmond, a two-way force out of Petersburg High School in Virginia, became the highest-ranked player (No. 27 on the 247Sports Composite) to choose the Cowboys since Cade Cunningham in 2020.
Beyond seeking better on-court equilibrium, Lutz also leaned more extensively on Profile. The personality test, which has been implemented by Illinois, Purdue and more college and professional organizations, has become even more valuable to coaches in the NIL era given the intense turnover and how quickly the courting process moves in the portal. Oklahoma State was loaded with talent in 2025-26 but the team often lacked cohesion and played selfishly. To mitigate the chance of that happening again, the program gave more weight to Profile, using it to identify guys who value teamwork and winning above all else. “I’m hoping that we have a better result (than last season) because we spent a lot of time trying to cover all the bases, that being one of the major ones,” Lutz says.
Since the portal opened, the Cowboys have signed seven players — six transfers and one more high school recruit. Anthony Felesi, a 6-foot-5 guard with a 6-foot-11 wingspan, rounds out a superb freshman class that’s ranked seventh in the country by 247Sports. Felesi led the entire Nike EYBL Scholastic League in scoring (21.6 points per game) and is known for his exceptional defense. As a junior at Utah Prep Academy, the four-star wing played alongside projected No. 1 overall pick A.J. Dybantsa.
While OSU’s roster is mostly new, Lutz is bringing in two players from Sam Houston (6-foot-3 senior guard Kashie Natt and 6-foot-1 sophomore guard Jacob Walker) and two former teammates on the Montenegrin club SC Derby (6-foot-5 senior guard Luka Bogavac and 6-foot-11 senior forward Andrija Grbovic).
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Natt, the 2025-26 CUSA Defensive Player of the Year, was one of the top perimeter defenders on the market. The rising senior averaged 10.8 points, 8.2 rebounds (third nationally among guards), 2.4 assists and 2.0 steals in his sole season at Sam Houston. Walker is more of an offensive weapon, coming off a freshman campaign in which he posted 11.5 points per game off the bench to earn CUSA Sixth Man of the Year honors. Over his last 11 outings, he upped his scoring average to 17.3 points.
After two seasons with SC Derby, which competes in the Adriatic League and is also the former club of Illinois standouts David Mirkovic, Tomislav Ivisic and Zvonimir Ivisic, Bogavac was considered among the top international prospects joining college basketball when he signed with North Carolina a year ago. The sharpshooting wing went on to average 9.8 points in 24.3 minutes and led the Tar Heels in three-pointers. “Anytime you have guys who come across into the college system, it takes them a little bit of time —especially in Luka’s situation — to get acclimated and get comfortable,” Lutz says. “So you expect Year Two to be much better than Year One.”
Grbovic, a floor-spacing big, falls into a similar category. Despite extensive professional experience, the 23-year-old still needed to adjust to the college game after agreeing to a deal with Arizona State last spring. In his debut season, he started 27 of 33 games and averaged 6.8 points and 2.9 rebounds. His shot was up and down, but playing for SC Derby with Bogavac in 2024-25, Grbovic connected on 43.9 percent of his threes.
With starting forwards Parsa Fallah and Christian Coleman graduating, Lutz also needed a strong paint presence to control the glass and provide interior scoring. He found one in Georgetown transfer Julius Halaifonua, a 7-foot junior center who plays with power and has great touch around the basket. As a sophomore in 2025-26, Halaifonua averaged 9.5 points and 4.4 rebounds in just 19.8 minutes.
The program made arguably its splashiest move in late May, signing UCF transfer Jordan Burks, a 6-foot-9 senior forward. Burks helped lead the Knights to their first NCAA Tournament appearance since 2019, averaging 13.3 points and 4.8 rebounds while shooting 45.5 percent from the field and 37.3 percent from three. A prototypical 3-and-D wing, he brings tremendous versatility, athleticism and length.
On paper, OSU’s revamped roster has the balance Lutz was searching for. It blends scorers and defenders, shooters and drivers, speed and size, youth and experience. Most importantly, due to Profile, it consists of like-minded players who should mesh well on and off the court.
Lutz anticipates there being a healthy competition for roles throughout the summer, with all four freshmen contending to be in the rotation. “I never even talk about whether you’re a senior or freshman,” Lutz says. “My job is to put the best players on the floor who can help us to win. And if these four freshmen can beat out a sophomore or a senior, that means that we’re pretty darn talented is the way I look at it.”
As the dust settles on portal season and June workouts commence, the buzz is growing in Stillwater. While Oklahoma State has stumbled for much of the past decade, fans have begun rallying around the program since Lutz’s arrival, sensing that it’s headed in the right direction. With their refined formula and reconstructed team, the Cowboys are positioned to take another step up in 2026-27.
“At one point in the nonconference (last season), our students were darn near outnumbering the regular ticket holders,” Lutz says. “It just shows that there’s starting to be some buy-in from the community and from the university, and they’re starting to get behind your program. So now the next thing is, we just have to continue to win.”
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