FRISCO, Texas - Eric Morris didn’t waste time softening the message at Big 12 Media Days. Oklahoma State, in his view, needed a “hard reset.”
That’s a strong line, but Morris backed it up with the kind of perspective that comes from walking into a program with a long, proud history and realizing the recent standard hadn’t matched the old one. The new head coach said he had to remind himself that some players in the locker room had spent two years at Oklahoma State without ever experiencing the feeling of coming in after a conference win.
“Ton of success, but we needed a hard reset, I felt like,” Morris said. “When I got there, I had to realize there are kids in this program who have been there for two years that hadn't experienced walking into that locker room after winning a conference game.”
Morris was the first coach up on the main stage at the Ford Center at the Star, and he brought the upbeat energy that has already become part of his early run in Stillwater. He also made clear that his view of Oklahoma State comes with a deep sense of what the program used to feel like from the outside.
He compared the current moment to his memories of Boone Pickens Stadium from his time as a player and coach at Texas Tech, saying the place used to stand out to him as one of the loudest and most charged environments in the league.
“Oklahoma State was so good in my memories,” he said. “I remember going to Boone Pickens, how rowdy it was, the paddles slapping against the wall, the student section on fire. My memories were always good, and during those times, they were a bunch of eight-win teams, nine-win teams, 10-win teams.”
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