With four of five starters returning off last season's Final Four squad, Eddie Sutton is on the brink of building his legacy as one of the best coaches in NCAA history. His career numbers carry enough weight to make that case: 755 victories (9th best in NCAA history); a winning percentage of a little over 72 percent; just a single losing season in 34 years; 24 seasons of 20 or more wins; and 25 NCAA Tournament berths, including 12 runs to the Sweet 16 and three Final Four outings. He's also been named national coach of the year four times and conference coach of the year on eight different occasions, becoming one of only two in the country to earn the latter award in four different conferences. He's only one of three coaches to lead four different schools to the Big Dance ( Oklahoma State, Creighton, Arkansas and Kentucky). Despite unsubstantiated rumors of his possible retirement during the final stages of the Cowboys' run to the Final Four last April, the 68-year-old Sutton is far from being done and there are no good reasons. for him to be done. Sutton is in reasonably good health, as evidenced by his ability to recover from a minor injury suffered when he was unintentionally bumped into and lost his footing on an escalator at Los Angeles' International Airport in July. He's also coming off one of the better coaching performances in his illustrious career, taking a team that had four Division I transfers and capturing the school's first outright conference championship since 1965.

Last year the Cowboys were slapped around in the Big 12 opener at Texas Tech, losing 83-62 to the Red Raiders. Sutton's team bounced back to win 21 of the next 22 contests to make its second Final Four appearance since the mid-90s. The only loss in that span was a 93-92 double-overtime heartbreaker at pre-season favorite Missouri. OSU also became the first Big 12 regular-season champs to run the table in the conference tournament since 2000 ( Iowa State), and marked the first time in school history Cowboys won both league titles. They also tied the school record with 31 victories.

This year’s team will have very deserved high expectations placed upon them. The starting five will consist of five seniors; four of which played very significant roles in the Cowboys run to the Final Four. Point guard John Lucas III could quite possibly be the best player in all of the land. There wasn’t much he didn’t do last season. He was in the top ten in the Big XII in points, assists, free-throw percentage, assist-turnover ratio, three point percentage and three pointers made. Rounding out the rest of the starting lineup is Daniel Bobik at shooting guard, Joey Graham at small forward, Ivan McFarland at power forward, and Frans Steyn at center. McFarland surprised a number of fans when they saw his name on this season’s roster. McFarland was listed as a senior last year, but gained an extra year of eligibility since he got his degree in three and a half years and is now going for his masters.

Having this much talent that is combined with experience nothing short of a National Championship will be good enough for OSU or their fans. It will be anything but easy though. The Cowboys in one of the toughest basketball conferences, the Big XII, and anything can happen in the Big Dance, but look for them to go deep into the tourney.