It’s safe to say Missouri State won’t be staying in a certain hotel in Stillwater, Oklahoma, anytime soon.
Microtel by Wyndham issued a statement following Missouri State baseball’s brief stay at the local hotel during the team’s appearance in last week’s Stillwater Regional in the 2022 NCAA Baseball Tournament.
Missouri State stayed at the hotel on Wednesday in advance of its opening-round game on Friday. Players on the team posted photos of room conditions that included “mysterious undergarments” being left in the room, stains on mattresses, fake eyelashes on the carpet, hair on pillows and a video of possible bed bugs.
The hotel, which issued a statement that the News-Leader confirmed on Tuesday, accused players of breaking into “out of order rooms that were undergoing renovations.” The university has denied those accusations.
About half of the team left the hotel at around 12:30 a.m. to walk to a different hotel while the other half stayed behind due to the lack of available rooms. The next day, the entire team moved out of the Stillwater hotels and moved into one in Ponca City which is located just over 40 miles north of Stillwater.
After photos of the hotel conditions went viral, the hotel issued a statement on Friday in advance of the Bears’ opening-round game against Oklahoma State.
“They entered hotel rooms that they had no permission to enter, without knowing if another guest was inside,” the hotel said in a statement. “They then took photos of the substandard conditions in those rooms (which is why they were temporarily decommissioned), and posted the photos on social media portraying those rooms as the ones that they were provided for their stay.”
More:Missouri State baseball players share gross photos of hotel conditions during NCAA Tournament trip
Missouri State says there is ‘blame to go around’, denies hotel’s allegations
Missouri State Athletics Director Kyle Moats denied the allegation in a Wednesday interview with the News-Leader. He said there was blame to go around on the hotel’s side, Oklahoma State’s side and Missouri State’s side — while suggesting that taking the issue to social media wasn’t the best route.
Moats questioned why someone would think the Bears would inconvenience themselves and move to a different hotel 40 miles away or move to a different hotel in the middle of the night.
“It doesn’t make any sense,” Moats said. “I’ve tried to not single them out necessarily but when the kids saw those things and those things were in the rooms that shouldn’t have been there, that was a problem and they didn’t want to stay there. I don’t blame them.”
Oklahoma State was responsible for making the hotel arrangements for visiting teams for the regional. Moats said that Oklahoma State acknowledged the situation happened and that the hotel had issues.
The hotel’s statement said Missouri State had been unresponsive to its communications and hoped the school would take responsibility. Moats said the school had some cooperation from the hotel the morning after the social media posts were made.
“I think that statement is not completely accurate, at least from our standpoint,” Moats said.
Moats said he was happy that the situation didn’t appear to have an impact on the Bears’ performance on the field. They went 1-2 at the regional which included a thrilling comeback win to beat Grand Canyon.
More:Missouri State baseball wanted to return to prominence. The Bears think they succeeded.
Wyatt D. Wheeler is a reporter and columnist with the Springfield News-Leader. You can contact him at 417-371-6987, by email at [email protected] or Twitter at @WyattWheeler_NL. He’s also the co-host of Sports Talk on Jock Radio weekdays from 4-6 p.m.