Sooner Basketball: M & W face tough weeks w games @ home & road!

[OUBeliever56A]

The Oklahoma Sooner Basketball Teams each face two tough teams this week with games on the road and at home during the week. The games this week follow games on Saturday that saw a wrestling match in Norman as the Men defeated OSU and a game in Ames where the Sooner Women defeated the Cyclones easier than most thought. I tried to watch both games in Puerta Vallarta but it seems ESPN+ can not be accessed outside of the country. So I 'watched' both on Live Stats and listened to the Men's game on radio.

The Sooner Men are now 6-5 in conference and are in tie for 6th in the Big 12. They are 2 full games out of first place. The Men play two teams above them this week in Baylor (6-4) and Kansas (7-5). Kansas has already lost once this week as the Jayhawks got beat in Lubbock last night by 29. Coach Self was not around to see the end as he got two "T's" and was gone with about 7 minutes to play. The Sooners are ranked again this week at #25 in the AP and 21 in the Coaches polls. Baylor is ranked 12 & 13, Kansas is ranked 6 & 7. The NET Rankings are 31 for OU, 12 for Baylor and 17 for Kansas.

The Men play at Baylor tonight at 8 PM. Baylor is not as big and long as they have been in past years, but they are still a very strong team. To finish the week, the Men host Kansas at 3 PM on Saturday. Both games are on the ESPN main channels with the Baylor game on ESPN2/U and the Kansas game on ESPN. the two games this week will go a long way to determining where the Sooners finish in the Big 12 this year. I think the Men need to split their games at least this week. A sweep would be tremendous, to drop both games would be a tough kick in the pants for them.

The Women are now 11-1 are in first place in the Big 12 by a full game over K-State. The Women play Baylor (7-5) at home in LNC on Wednesday at 6 PM on ESPN+. On Saturday, the Sooners will travel to West Virginia (9-3). From what I have seen, Baylor is not the team they have been in the past. West Virginia is a strong team and even better at home. The Sooner women will have to play well to go 2-0 this week, I think I would take a win at home on Wednesday and a good game at West Virginia going either way for the Women. But the Sooners did play very well on the road at I-State last Saturday thanks to Verhulst's big game.

The Sooners are ranked 23 in the AP Poll and hold 34 ranking in the NET. Baylor is ranked 21 in the AP and 19 in the NET. West Virginia is ranked 24 and holds a 22 NET ranking.

Good luck to both Sooner teams this week in big weeks for both teams.

Here is the pregame article about the Men's game tonight about the game at Baylor.

https://soonersports.com/news/2024/2/12 ... -at-baylor

The Big 12 conference contest will air 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 and be broadcast by ESPN2 with Rich Hollenberg (PxP) and Chris Spatola (analyst) on the call.

Boomer Sooner!

[OUBeliever56A]

My phrase about the two games this week for the Men's Team above was this:

"The Men play at Baylor tonight at 8 PM. Baylor is not as big and long as they have been in past years, but they are still a very strong team. To finish the week, the Men host Kansas at 3 PM on Saturday. Both games are on the ESPN main channels with the Baylor game on ESPN2/U and the Kansas game on ESPN. the two games this week will go a long way to determining where the Sooners finish in the Big 12 this year. I think the Men need to split their games at least this week. A sweep would be tremendous, to drop both games would be a tough kick in the pants for them."

The Baylor Men played very well despite playing without Love, their young guard. Nunn, their 10.5 PPG guard scored 27 last night on great shooting form the everywhere on the floor to be the big difference in the game. Baylor defeated the Sooners 79-62 stemming from a surge in 4 minutes of the last 7 minutes of the first half.

Uzan made a three with 6:48 minutes left in the half to tie the score at 20-20 after OU fell behind early in the game. But Baylor quickly scored on three shots from downtown to take a 9 point lead 29-20. Nunn made two of the three's with Bridges making the third on a excuse me late shot before the shot-clock went off. Soares followed with a three of his own, to cut the lead to 6, but that was as close as the Sooners ever got after that. Baylor scored the next 7 points to lead by 13 points. By the 2:41 mark of the half, Baylor lead by 13 and the game was essentially a steep uphill battle by the Sooners.

The Sooners played a man-down also with Hugley IV out with some sort of knee injury that may take a while to heal, if he is not out for the rest of the season. That leaves the Sooners thin at the post position. Northweather was moved up in the rotation and looked a bit lost in his first rotation time against the tough zone as the offense slowed down with little movement by the whole team. Oklahoma may need to reach down to Kaden Cooper and Yaya Keita to play more for a while. The Baylor defense prevented any Sooner from shooting 10 shots last night. That took all five players paying attention on the Baylor defense. Soares somehow managed 17 points on only 6 official shots. He was 5 for 5 from the free throw line. Uzan, McCollum, Oweh and Moore all scored 9 points for OU. Baylor had four other players score in double-digits in addition to Nunn.

The Sooners did not shoot the ball badly at all, but Baylor simply shoot the ball very well with 55% from the field and 52% from three-point territory as they made 11 of 21 shots from downtown to do something no one else has done against OU this season. they made more than 10 three's.

OU only had 12 turnovers, but 7 were early and Baylor made the most of them with 17 points scored off of OU turnovers in first half. When a team loses out on the chance to score 14 pints and instead give up 17, it is tough to overcome that. A 40 minute game boiled down to about 4 minutes in the first half.

It was a loss, but it was on the road. The pressure is now on the Sooners to play well against Kansas at home in LNC on Saturday. Kansas does not play a mid-week game this week. Kansas is 1-5 on the road this season in the Big 12. OU is 4-2 at home this season (lost to Texas and Tech). OU needs to find a way to fill the minutes for Hugley inside against Dickinson or Adams. If Oklahoma can pick up a win on Saturday, they will have spilt a tough week in the Big 12 schedule.

Good luck to the Sooners on Saturday @ 3 PM against Kansas.

Boomer Sooner!

[SwampSooner]

The game reminded me of a 'Malcolm in the Middle' episode where Malcolm went out for basketball. The coach had the team continuously pass the ball around the outside and never shoot.

Since every team on the Big XII plays a zone defense against them, they have to get some consistent outside shooting.

[Brisket]

The game reminded me of a 'Malcolm in the Middle' episode where Malcolm went out for basketball. The coach had the team continuously pass the ball around the outside and never shoot.

Since every team on the Big XII plays a zone defense against them, they have to get some consistent outside shooting.

This game may have been my last straw with Moser. UCF flummoxed OU with a zone, so the coaching staff had to assume more teams will utilize that against OU. Instead, it was like the team hadn't seen a zone before & hadn't learned a thing.

I'm no basketball expert, but even I know that you beat a zone in 1 of 2 ways: 1) From the inside out. Get the ball to the middle of the zone & then either drive or kick the ball out from there. 2) Push the pace off a rebound so you can get a shot off before the zone sets up. OU did neither. Like you said, Swamp, they stood still outside the 3-point line & just passed the ball around to one another.

[OUBeliever56A]

I know as a player, I played against many zone defenses. At 5'10" it did not take much to cover all the angles across the edges of the zones or into the middle of the zones. Players 6'1" could do that pretty easy against me. Today, in D1 ball, players 6'6" or taller are in the that zone with long arms. Even at 6'4", the passing lanes are just not there. The 'big' that should be in the middle to catch those penetrating passes has to be a player than can either make the open jumper or make a good pass under pressure. When it was Soares or Moore, it was good, I understand why it was not Godwin or Northweather going to the middle.

Back 50 years ago, there were no skip passes. I remember lots of 'running of the stairs' if you tried to pass across the zone. I still do not truly understand how you make a skip pass across 6'6" players even if you are 6'4". It is a matter of length and the size of the court.

'Brisket' is right, UCF did a very similar thing. OU should have been more ready for it. Maybe the injury to Hugley IV affected the reaction last night. He would have been the best at being in the middle. When the offense is away from the coaches, it is a tough game these days on the road.

Flush the game and get ready for Kansas on Saturday.

[SwampSooner]

Just finished listening to the Oklahoma Breakdown, where Ikard and Lehman interviewed Porter Moser. They questioned him about playing against zone defenses and I inferred that the game plan was to use Hugley to break the Baylor defense. With him getting hurt against Ok St, we had no one with the height to be successful.

Anyway, here is a link to the interview (Starts at ~ the 39 minute report) -