Sooner Men's BB- Hosts Baylor for Saturday DH at LNC: Need a WIN

[OUBeliever56A]

The Oklahoma Sooners will host Baylor at 3 PM on Saturday afternoon at home in LNC. The Men's game is the first game of a DH with the Sooner Women who play Oklahoma State in a Bedlam Matchup at 6 PM in the late game.

The Sooner Men are coming off their 16-point loss to Oklahoma State in Stillwater on Wednesday night. The Sooners are 2-4 in the Big 12 and 11-7 overall. Baylor comes into the game on Saturday on a 3-game winning streak with a 3-3 record in the Big 12 and a 13-5 record overall. Baylor is ranked 21st/22nd with a NET ranking of #16. OU is unranked and holds a NET ranking of #57. Here is the staff writers article about the OU-Baylor matchup.

https://soonersports.com/news/2023/1/20 ... n-saturday

The game against the Bears will be broadcast on ESPN2 with Mark Neely and Jay Williams on the call. Fans may also listen on the Sooner Sports Radio Network (KRXO 107.7 FM The Franchise in Oklahoma City; KTBZ 1430 AM in Tulsa; Varsity Radio App) with Toby Rowland and Kevin Henry announcing.

Oklahoma must find a way on Saturday to slow down the Baylor guards. The top 3 scorers for Baylor are George 17.7 PPG, Flagler 16.0 PPG and Cryer 14.2 PPG. They score 48 PPG between the three guards who are all under 6'4". The other two starters are 6'7" Bridges (9.4 PPG 5.3 Rebounds) and 6'10" Thamba (5.4 PPG 5.0 Rebounds). Baylor also plays 2 other guards and 2 other forwards (6'0" an 7'0"). It looks like Baylor plays most of the time with 3 guards on the floor.

This has been the same story that the Sooners have faced lately. They seemed forced to play a 3 guard set to counter the other team. If Hill cannot guard one of the Baylor guards successfully, the Sooners will be forced to sit one of their three F/C in T Groves, J Groves and Hill and play one of Cortes or Noland with Sherfield and Uzan. Which ever two Sooners match up with George and Flagler will have their hands full on Saturday on the defensive end of the floor.

My other concern will be the scoring. Baylor scores 80.6 points a game. I doubt OU can keep up with that scoring unless the Sooners shoot extremely well and handle the ball extremely well with los turnovers (<10). The Sooners need to keep the game in the high 60s or very low 70s to have a chance to win the game IMO. Sherfield and one more Sooner needs to score 15+ points on Saturday with a couple more scoring 10 points to be in the game.

The Sooners need to rebound quickly from their loss to OSU on Wednesday. Hopefully, that game is forgotten by the Sooners and they are approaching the game with Baylor with optimism. The Sooners need a win fairly badly on Saturday.

Good luck to the Sooners.

Boomer Sooner!

[OUBeliever56A]

Here are the standings for the Men's Big 12 Basketball as of 1-21-2023 before the Saturday action starts.

T1st - Kansas - 5-1 and 16-2 overall. Ranked #2 in AP and Coaches. #6 in the NET rankings.
T1st - Kansas State - 5-1 and 16-2 overall. Ranked #13 in AP and #15 in Coaches. #13 in the NET rankings.
T1st - Iowa State - 5-1 and 14-3 overall. Ranked #12 in AP and Coaches. #9 in the NET rankings.
4th - Texas - 4-2 and 15-3 overall. Ranked #7 in AP and Coaches. #10 in the NET rankings.
T5th - Baylor - 3-3 and 13-5 overall. Ranked #21 in AP and #22 in Coaches. #16 in the NET rankings.
T5th - Texas Christian - 3-3 and 14-4 overall. Ranked #14 in AP and #13 in Coaches. #25 in the NET rankings.
T7th - Oklahoma - 2-4 and 11-7 overall. Not ranked. #57 in the NET rankings.
T7th - Oklahoma State - 2-4 and 10-8 overall. Not ranked. #45 in the NET rankings.
9th - West Virginia - 1-5 and 11-7 overall. #24 in the NET rankings.
10th - Texas Tech - 0-6 and 10-8 overall. #RV42 in Coaches. Not ranked in AP. #72 in the NET rankings.

The Sooner men can surprise everyone today with a win over Baylor. the game will likley be dominated by the guard play during the game. Maybe the Sooners have a big effort in them today on the ESPN2 broadcast. I will choose OU in the upset just because I think they have a surprise left in them. Baylor has struggled to get started in the Big 12 and finally won 3 in-a-row, maybe they will have a let down. Boomer Sooner!

The rest of the action for the 10 big 12 teams is on Saturday this weekend.

TCU is at Kansas at Noon on CBS. I am very interested to see how the Center for TCU plays against Kansas. If Lampkin can have a big game against Kansas, I think that TCU has a shot at winning at Lawrence. A shot. TCU may have enough speed to give Kansas trouble defensively. I really want to take TCU to surprise everyone. but common sense and the home court Kansas advantage makes me take Kansas. But......TCU has a shot I think.

Texas Tech is at Kansas State at 1 PM on ESPN2. I do not see how Tech can win against K-State in Manhattan after the K-State upset over Kansas on Tuesday unless the win and over-confidence is the reason for K-State to drop this game. K-State wins, maybe big.

Iowa State is at Oklahoma State at 1 PM on ESPN+. The home court advantage for OSU is large. I think that Iowa State is one of the better teams against a crowd and tough teams in the Big 12 though. I will take Iowa State in the game but it will likely be close. OSU does have a shot to beat Iowa State.

Texas is at West Virginia at 5 PM on ESPN. I think West Virginia is due to win a few games to show their talent level. I will take then to win at home over Texas. I might be that I just don't like that ugly dirty brown/orange color also. I take West Virginia to win this one.

[OU Guy]

Free throws

Baylor 13-17
OU 1-2

50-49 OU up but look at those FTs. Can’t win 5 vs 8

[OU Guy]

OU was leading a lot of game after slow start. Wondering how they will lose this one based on track record of failing to close out close games. Also giving up a ton of second chance points. Foul difference is so huge though else OU is running away with game. Can’t even get home calls. Heck, just an even ref called game would be a big deal, but we will not get that while in this conf.

[White River]

Baylor hits 4 big three pointers in the final minutes.

[OU Guy]

Up by 2 with 89 seconds

[OU Guy]

LOL, right on cue. This is more than just bad luck becaise its game after game.

[White River]

Sooners can't close and honestly their clock management was poor in their final possession.

[OU Guy]

At 1:37 we scored to go up 2

Our next score was down 4 points and got 2 at 0:02 mark (we came out of timeout at 0:17 mark but used all clock to get 2)

I think our season is over. Next Tue we play at TCU (who blew out Kansas today) and then play top 6 ranked Bama next weekend.

OU is OFer vs any ranked team this year. Not good

[OU Guy]

Just the facts

[White River]

Personal fouls weren't that much different but free throws were lopsided.

Baylor Game Stats.png (44.51 KiB) Viewed 435 times

[soonerindallas]

Same song, 50th verse. Needing a difference maker at the end of a game & getting nothing. Another no tournament year.

[SoonerTony]

We can’t win close games this year in either football or men’s basketball. Neither team able to finish close games. Very depressing.

[Bixby_Sooner]

Just... can't... finish.

I hope this doesn't find into the Baseball or Softball teams.

[OUBeliever56A]

What is there to say about the Sooners loss to Baylor on Saturday afternoon? Yes, it is frustrating to be so very close to a big win, yet feel so far away from that victory at the same time. The Sooners drop another close one to a Big 12 top team. The 62-60 win by Baylor was one more dagger to the heart of the Sooners. Four losses to teams with a NET ranking of 16 or better before Saturday's game. The Sooners have 2 wins over the bottom two Big 12 teams by six points. The anomaly is the 16 point loss to Oklahoma State in Stillwater.

To me the key was the number of offensive rebounds by Baylor and second chance points by Baylor. The Bears snagged 17 offensive boards and turned them into 30 second chance points. 30 of them. It is very difficult to overcome that for the Sooners. The Sooners played the majority of the time with 3 guards on the court on Saturday. Did that led to the high number of offensive boards? Did the athletic ability and length of the Bears give them an advantage on the boards. I would say it is a combination of the two things.

Oklahoma led at half time 30-26 behind better shooting. The Sooners shot 48% from the field and 30% from 3-point territory. Baylor shot 36% and 12.5% from downtown. Only the five free throws that Baylor added made kept the game close in the first half. OU had no shots from the free throw line in the first half as OU committed 8 fouls to only 4 for Baylor. Both teams led by as many as 6 points, Baylor early in the half and OU late in the half.

The scoring was widely distributed for the Sooners as T Groves had 10 (two 3's), Sherfield had 8, Oweh had 6 (off the bench) with Hill and Godwin adding 4 and 2. Hill had 6 boards. J Groves played a little more than 9 minutes in the first half due to matchups. I would say that Oweh added a defensive presence to the Sooner effort in the first half.

In the second half, both teams led by no more than 4 points. The Sooners led for over 11 minutes in the second half. In the end, the game was reduced to a 5 minite game. With a little over 5 minutes let, T Groves maded 2 of 2 free throws to give the Sooners a 52-50 lead over Baylor. By my count, both teams had six more possessions of the basketball the rest of the game. OU scored 4 times and had misses the other two. T Groves scored two second chance points, Hill scored 2, Noland scored 2 on a fast break, and Hill scored the final two points. Scoring 2/3rds of the time with no turnovers down the stretch is not too bad. Baylor also scored on 4 of their six possessions. They got the absolute most out of the four made buckets as all four were 3-pointers. One was a second chance 3 to put Baylor up 53-52. Bridges made 3 of the Baylor 3's before that point in the game, Baylor was 3 of 16 from downtown. Finishing 4 of 4 improved that to 7 of 20. In the second half prior to the last 5 minutes, Baylor scored 17 other second chance points out of their 30 total. That probably kept Baylor in the game to make the final push to victory.

Down by 4 with 17 seconds left, the Sooners had the ball with an inbounds play, OU really got very little out of the possession. Somehow 14 seconds ticked away before a desperate three was put up by the Sooners. Baylor blocked the shot however and ended up out-of-bounds off of Baylor so OU got one more shot with 2 seconds left. Hill scored a bucket to make the score 62-60 with virtually no time on the clock remaining. Baylor needed to get the ball in-bounds one time. Baylor did that. Game over.

Once again for the second time in two games, Sherfield was shut out in the second half of the game. Hill scored 13 in the 2nd half. T Groves scored 6. Uzan scored 5. Godwin, Nolan and J Groves scored 2 each. J Groves played less than 8 minutes in the second half again due to matchups. OU did outshoot Baylor in the second half 43% to 36%. But those last four 3's by Baylor hurt big time. I would say that Baylor's 5 more free throws made a difference also. On the same number of fouls, Baylor shot 5 more free throws.

The Sooners drop to 2-5 (corrected from 2-4) in the Big 12 and a 11-8 overall record. They are now in 8th place in the Big 12. Next week will be a big challenge once again. On Tuesday, the Sooners travel to TCU to play on a short turnaround. the game will be on ESPN+. TCU simply mauled Kansas in Lawrence on Saturday as they beat the Jayhawks by 23 in front of the Jayhawk faithful fans. TCU is 4-3 in the Big 12 and 15-4 overall. On Saturday, the Sooners return to LNC to play Alabama, in a 1 PM tip off on ESPN. Alabama is ranked in the Top 4 teams in the country.

I would never say that the Sooners are playing something close to perfect basketball. But they do play very hard and ar getting a great deal out of their talent. I think Coach Moser is getting the team prepared for each game and getting them to play pretty well. The simple matter is probably that the Sooners rarely have the best player in the game. Sometimes not even 1 of the best 3 players in the game. The season is what it is. The Sooners are wearing the Crimson and Cream with pride and giving it their all game after game.

I will say this though. for a fan base that is often quick to be critical of the Men's team and Coach Moser and often say that the fans will come if the team is a winner on the floor, I thought this was strange yesterday. As the men's game ended, over 50% of the crowd stood up and walked out. The student section on the north end of the LNC, totally left with maybe 15% remaining. The next game was being played by the Sooner Women. They ARE in FIRST PLACE. They ARE 16-2 overall this year. It was a Bedlam game. LNC was close to 3/4 full on the lower ring and had a solid presence in the upper ring but LNC was no more than 50% full for the Women's Bedlam game. The women do play entertaining basketball. When has the Sooner fanbase seen a 97 to 93 point winning ballgame from the Men's Team? I think it is likely many years ago. I will step off of my soap box now.

If you want a team to follow and to cheer for, there is one playing in LNC. Come to their games and support them. You will be entertained and see some talented players.

Good luck to the Sooner Men this week against two very good teams.

Boomer Sooner!