Stillwater, Okla. ? The basketball game, a yo-yo in the hands of Oklahoma State guard Byron Eaton, didn’t always go the way he wanted it to go. Sometimes he fumbled the ball and he even missed a couple of free throws. For the most part, though, Eaton, a 5-foot-11 junior out of Dallas, decided at what pace the game would progress and where he would take the basketball.

Eaton was so much better than any other player on the floor it’s pointless to waste time discussing the identity of the game’s second-best player. Very often, the team with the best player wins the close game, especially when that player is a point guard.

Who is Kansas’ best player? What is the Jayhawks’ offensive identity? If Oklahoma State is Eaton’s team, whose team is Kansas? To answer those questions is to hesitate, so it shouldn’t come as a shock that at times in close games Kansas has the look of hesitation.

Using ball screens to drive to the hoop and draw fouls, Eaton scored 26 points and dished four assists, both game highs. He made 16 of 18 free throws and had five turnovers. Aggressiveness resulted in all those numbers, including the high miscue total. It’s Eaton’s team, and he knows it. That’s why he referred to the Cowboys as “my team” a half-dozen times after they defeated Kansas, 61-60, in front of a sellout crowd of 13,905, very few of whom were security guards, based on the poor crowd control when an orange mob stormed the court.

This question was put before Eaton, too aggressive a personality to shy from the truth: Whose team is Kansas?

“I don’t think they have one dominant guy that can just say the team is his because they have so many combo guards who can play the point,” Eaton said. “I’m really the only true point guard we have. Kansas doesn’t have that one person, that true point guard that can say, ‘This is my team.’ But they’re doing a great job together, and they have enough wins to say so. I wish we were in their place right now.”

Sherron Collins could be that player, but injuries have slowed him, and he hasn’t yet established himself as a consistently reliable defender.

The beauty of KU’s balance is that it can’t be said that if one player has an off day it translates to a likely loss, as pretty much is the case with OSU and Eaton. The bane of it is that with such a balance of talent, the tendency can be to avoid being labeled a selfish player and defer to teammates. It’s a tough balancing act.

As for the offensive identity, the best approach is to get the ball to Darrell Arthur close to the basket. Kansas has to make that the constant goal, but it’s a tough one to meet when Arthur spends so much time on the bench in foul trouble. He played 17 minutes and attempted three shots. Brandon Rush watched all 20 first-half minutes. Unfortunately, he was on the court for 12 of them.

“It just comes down to heart,” Eaton said. “We out-toughed them, and I think we wanted it more than they did.”

If Eaton had been aware that two Kansas players were grieving the deaths of family members felled by bullets, he would not have said that, but the analysis was sound in this respect: When Kansas gets outhustled and loses focus, there isn’t an Eaton to snap the yo-yo back into his hand.