Riding high: with a roster full of transfers, Oklahoma State Cowboys coach Eddie Sutton has proved once again that he can win with any type of team.(NCAA Final Four)

Every bit of Eddie Sutton's genius was evident on that last play, wasn't it? One of his guys botches a play call, loses his grip on the basketball, stumbles--and somehow the ball winds up in the hands of Oklahoma State's most prolific jump shooter with the game clock rapidly lapsing. Just like the coach drew it up, right? Well, to tell the truth, yeah.

Joey Graham spent the first half against Saint Joseph's hiding in the background, retreating from responsibility. Now, with Oklahoma State down a point and a dozen seconds away from watching another Final Four on television, he ignores instructions to dive into the low post. Instead, he charges up to take command, catching a pass above the top of the key. And John Lucas, who launched three airballs in the first half but already has hit five shots after the break, sneaks over to open space in the left corner, trusting that Graham will have the composure to find him with a quick pass.

Lucas and Graham had been the targets of Sutton's most candid comments during the interminable halftime break. To Lucas, Sutton said, "Where are you? You're not playing like yourself." To Graham, he declared, "We're not going to win this game if you don't play." Sutton told all of the Cowboys, trailing by six and lucky to be so close, that many other great Oklahoma State players and teams never had the opportunity to play one game to reach the Final Four, and if they did not expend all of their energy and emotion on the remaining 20 minutes, they would regret it for the rest of their lives. It was not a time for subtlety.

Of all the gifted performers who gathered for the East Rutherford Regional last week, including the sublime Saint Joseph's backcourt of Jameer Nelson and Delonte West, gifted young Wake Forest guards Chris Paul and Justin Gray, Pittsburgh power players Chris Taft and Chevon Troutman and rugged Oklahoma State wing Tony Allen, none made as profound an impact as Sutton did in two 20-minute halftime breaks. His Cowboys shot 36.2 percent in the first halves of victories over Pitt and St. Joe's; they shot 58.8 percent in the second halves. This team isn't taking Sutton to his third Final Four. It's the other way around.

The plain truth about this season's Oklahoma State team is that if you examined its lineup--the absence of a true center, the muscular wing Graham passing for a power forward, the short bench--with anyone other than Sutton coaching you'd never figure a Final Four berth would be possible. The Cowboys were picked to finish fifth by the coaches in the Big 12 Conference. "That's where I would have picked us" Sutton says. But this--31 victories, regular-season and tournament championships in the Big 12, a Final Four appearance--it makes sense with Sutton in charge.

"He's as good as there is in the country at any level," says John Calipari, whose Memphis team lost to OSU in the NCAA Tournament second round. While coaching at UMass, Calipari lost to Sutton in the 1995 East Regional final. "We were up five on Oklahoma State. If we win the game, we go to the Final Four. It's halftime. I look at the stat sheet. I believe we shot 27 percent. I looked at my team and said, 'We're going to the Final Four. You deserve it; you worked hard. We're up five, and we shot 27 percent. There's no way we'll shoot 27 percent in the second half.' We shot 25. And we went home."

It is nine years later. Sutton has stormed past the standard retirement age. He turned 68 on March 12, celebrating that occasion and the first of three victories that secured Oklahoma State's first Big 12 Tournament championship. There is a slight hunch to his shoulders when he walks the sideline. As he sat before the game against St. Joe's, one arm resting across his lap and the other propping up his chin, he looked his age. He still did afterward, his delicate hip causing an unsteady climb up a stepladder. He stopped short of the top and braced his left arm against one of the rungs while he hacked the final few strands of the net away from the goal.