Oklahoma State Basketball is the Kobayashi Maru

Here's hoping Travis Ford can do his best Admiral Kirk impersonation...I'm pretty confident he doesn't like losing either.

I'll say this right now...I like Travis Ford a lot. He has always seemed to be "all in" with OSU hoops. He's done a lot of things to drum up support.

The one thing he has struggled to do is win tournament games, and his teams have generally underachieved.

His recruiting of late has been up to snuff, but the teams have still fallen short, and most of us will point to X's and O's. It's a well known premise that his contract probably saved his job after last season (looking at you, Mike Holder).

As we prepare to enter the 2014-15 season, the Cowboys will start 4 experienced players (Cobbins, Forte, Nash, and LSU transfer Anthony Hickey), so maturity shouldn't be an issue. Bench experience is a bit more of a question mark, as Hammonds, Sager, and Soucek are the only players with significant game experience at the D1 level.

Ford has not had much success with big men, so it will be interesting to see who gets work behind Cobbins. RS JR juco transfer Tony Allen comes in at 7-1, 240, and true freshman Mitch Solomon sports a wide body at 6-9, 235. The aforementioned Soucek has experience, but hasn't shown very much positive in his appearances.

Another participant who has garnered some attention in practice is wing player Jeffrey Carroll. Michael Cobbins has given him the knickname "Clip" for his streaky shooting which, like Daxx Garman's deep throws, is the stuff of scout team legend.

But the real wild card in all of this is new assistant coach James Dickey.

Dickey has had success at both Texas Tech and Houston as a head coach, and as an assistant at Kentucky actually recruited Ford. He also had stints as an assistant under both Eddie and Sean Sutton.

Multiple serious NCAA violations occurred during his tenure at Tech, but Dickey was never implicated in any improprieties.

His potential impact on the team could be huge.

His potential impact on Travis Ford's coaching career at Oklahoma State could be even bigger.

Despite Ford being a great, very likable guy, I don't think I would be exaggerating if I said that 90% of the fan base was looking for a coaching change at the end of last season.

So here we are, and the question to you is this....