Oklahoma State Head Coach Mike Boynton Talks About Kansas Infraction Case
Recently, the Kansas basketball program found itself finding out its punishment from a long trial of an infraction case, much like Oklahoma State was itself just a few years back. When Oklahoma State received an NCAA postseason ban, the biggest outrage was about players having to deal with the repercussions of something they weren't a part of.
It truly isn't fair for student-athletes to have to be punished for wrongdoings from an assistant coach or malpractice in the staff when they're oblivious or not even close to being a part of the program at the time.
With this happening recently, Oklahoma State head coach Mike Boynton was asked about the decision at the Big 12 Tipoff, given the similarities of the two cases.
"What happened to us was wrong," Boynton said, via 810 WHB. "That was the point. Not that someone else should also be done wrong. I think that was the wrong decision to make because of the same reason they're doing what they're doing now. They don't want to punish kids for something they didn't have anything to do with."
Evidently, it's fair for Boynton, Oklahoma State and all the Cowboys fans to be angry about this. It's not that they want Kansas to earn a postseason ban, but it's unfair that they had a worse punishment for practically the same thing.
This, however, didn't keep Boynton from praising legendary Kansas coach Bill Self.
"I've got a lot of respect for Coach [Bill] Self. I think he's the best coach in college basketball," Boynton said. "He's elite at what he does. He's actually been sort of a mentor to me. He's a graduate of the school that I coach at. He's helped me become a better coach.
"...I'm happy for Dajuan Harris Jr. and Kevin McCullar and even the new guys, Hunter Dickinson, they don't have to suffer for something that somebody else may have done in the past."
Again, it's good that these Jayhawks players aren't going to have to deal with any of the repercussions from the decision, but Boynton remains "really, really disappointed" that his players had to go through it at the time that they did, despite being unattached to the situation.
"Obviously, they're saying that they felt like what [Kansas] did was wrong, but no one will say that, unfortunately," Boynton continued. "I'm a big accountability person, just in general, so that's why you just pick up a call and say, 'Hey, we screwed up. It shouldn't have happened, we'll recognize that, and it probably won't happen again.'"
No matter what the end result was, it's good to see the NCAA rule on the side of the student-athletes, and hopefully, that cadence continues moving forward when dealing with similar situations.
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Kade has been covering a wide variety of teams ranging from the NFL to the NBA and college athletics since joining Sports Illustrated's On SI in 2022