Men's Basketball: Showdown Game with Cincy @ LNC Tonight @ 7 PM!

[OUBeliever56A]

At 7-9 in conference play and 19-10 overall, the Oklahoma Sooners need to step up tonight and their hold home court against the Cincinnati Bearcats who are 6-10 in conference and 17-12 overall. With a win tonight, the Sooners can move into a tie for no worse than 8th in the conference and have a shot at finishing at .500 (9-9) in conference play with a win over Texas this weekend in Austin. Texas lost last night to Baylor 93-85. A win tonight also gives the Sooners the 20th win for the season.

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 ESPN+ with Mark Neely (PxP) and Fran Fraschilla (analyst) on the call.

Cincinnati is 2-5 in their last 7 conference games. Their wins were at UCF and at home over Kansas State. Oklahoma is 3-4 over their last 7 games. The three wins for the Sooners were at home and and the four losses were divided with two on the road and two in the home. The two home losses were to Kansas and Houston.

The Sooners defeated the Bearcats in Cincy earlier in the season (5th game of the conference season) 69-65. For Oklahoma, McCollum scored 16, Oweh scored 14 and Hugley scored 11 with Malone almost reaching double digits with 9. OU outrebounded Cincy 42 to 36. In that game, Godwin got into foul trouble early and only played 11 minutes, with Hugley playing 24 minutes in the game.

This time, Godwin will have to stay out of foul trouble as Hugley is out with a leg issue and is said to be day-to-day on his comeback this season. It wil be interesting to see which Sooners can step up and replace the scoring of Hugley and Oweh from Game 1. Maybe Oweh finds his game again coming off the bench as he has not started the last two games. Moore, Uzan, Soares, Godwin and Darthard have been playing well lately with McCollum finding enough room to score in double-digits.

The Sooners shoot the ball a bit better than does Cincinnati and it will be important for the Sooners to do just that tonight to be able to win. Cincy probably rebounds better than does OU, but based upon the first game, OU can outplay the Bearcats on the boards to pick up an advantage. Oklahoma only had 8 assists in the first game on 24 made buckets. Hopefully, tonight the Sooners can share the ball a bit more and pick up more assists. Of course the Sooners need to take care of the ball as is always required.

Here is the Sooner staff writers article about the important game tonight for the Sooners.

https://soonersports.com/news/2024/3/4/ ... on-tuesday

A win tonight could really mean a great deal for the Sooners tonight. Good luck to the Sooners in every way.

Boomer Sooner!

[Raul]

OU so far playing super tight, super scared. Lots of “excuse me, sir, may I take a shot?” Body language.

[MsProudSooner]

Sooners win 74 - 71 in overtime. McCullom was held out with a shoulder injury. Hugley is still out after having his knee scoped. Maks Klanjsek had to give Uzan breaks and Northweather had to give Godwin breaks. Soares tweaked his ankle again. If they played tight at times, there was good reason.

[EMan]

Three of the last four games all came down to the final shot! That's tough on an old guy like me! After that Houston heartbreaker, OU deserved to pull one out. Their biggest lead of the game was the final margin, 3 points. And unlike the TT game earlier this season, the Sooners won this game at the line. OU was 28-34 at the line. Cincy was 9-11. But before we get too far ahead of ourselves, Cincy also shot 29 threes compared to only 15 by OU. So the Sooners were going inside more leading to some of the FT discrepancy. But also, the Sooners were fouled four times shooting a 3! FOUR times! That's 12 of those 34 FTs. I'm not sure I've ever seen a team fouled 4 times in the same game when taking a 3. And Cincy was fouled once shooting a 3, so in total it happened 5 times in the same game. That's not something you see every day!

As MsProud said, playing without Hugley and McCollum really taxed OU's depth. And unfortunately, Uzan had a really rough night on top of that, going 1-10 from the field and fouling out. It's not surprising the Sooners fell behind by double digits in both halves. But just like the Houston game, they showed a lot of grit and never gave up. With their 20th win on the season and playing in the toughest conference in the country, hopefully, that secured them a spot in the Big Dance. Guess we'll see.

[OU Chinaman]

...think this win assures OU a berth in the Big Dance.

Porter appears to have his team playing well at the right time of the season.
Hoping it results in a run in Big 12 tourney.

[OUBeliever56A]

Thank you! Thanks to three Sooners who were not Sooners this time last year. Le'Tre Darthard, Jalon Moore and Rivaldo Soares - just Thank You! The three of them played a minimum of 38:24 minutes last night of the 45 possible minutes. Soares probably played the last 10 or so on a bad ankle, leg with determination. More than anything else they just would not let the Sooners lose this game. Yes, others helped. You always have to have 5 players on the court. But just about everything important came from these three last night for Oklahoma.

Oklahoma won 74-71 in overtime over Cincinnati last night to pick up their 20th win of the season. The most since 2018-2019 when the Sooners were 20-14. The most for a Porter Moser team at Oklahoma. That is good for the Sooners and for the program.

Oklahoma was down by 13 in the first half and by 10 in the second half. In both cases, the Sooners played their way back into the game by the next break. The Sooners closed late in the first half to only trail by one point at 28-27 when the half ended. Oklahoma outscored Cincy 13-4 in the final 5 minutes of the half to make it a game as they went to the locker room. OU did that despite Cincy shooting at a 52% clip in the half.

In the second half, Cincy built up a ten point lead by the 11-minute mark before OU rallied to tie the ballgame with 6 minute left on a Maks Klanjscek bucket to make the score 53-53. Speaking of new Sooners, Klanjscek is a fourth new Sooner this year. In the most minutes he has played this season, he scored 7 points in one spurt to really help Oklahoma. Cincinnati quickly built the lead back to 7 points in 3 possessions. At this point, I began to doubt the win, I must admit. The Bearkat lead was still 5 at the 1:30 mark left in the game. But Moore and Darthard brought the Sooners back to lead for the first time on an out-of-bounds play with 15 seconds left as he made a three from the corner to make the score 67-66.

The game boiled down to a foul called with 3 seconds left against Sam Godwin as he battled for position for a rebound on a loose ball where the Cincy center had been all over his back before Godwin simply stood his ground and stood up. Terrible call, terrible timing. IMO. But the big 7-footer for Cincy, Bandaogo, missed the first one before making the second one. Oweh was able get a shot off at the buzzer but the game remained tied. The score was 67-67 at the end of regulation play.

I must mention the fouls and the foul shooting. Cincy committed 22 fouls and OU shot 34 free throws in the game. OU made 28 of them and they needed v=every one of them. The 82.4% free throw effort was critical in every way for OU to stay in this game. OU committed 16 fouls but Cincy only shot 11 free throws, making 9. Darthard was 12 of 14, Moore was 5 of 8, Klanjscek made 5 of 5, Godwin, Soares and Northweather was 6 of 8.

In overtime, the Sooners scored first on a Godwin dunk to go up by 2. Cincy quickly scored to even the game an 69-69. Darthard made one of two free throws to make it 70-69. Thomas just scored to make it 70-71 in favor of Cincy with 2:16 left. Oweh scored in the paint where it seemed he hung in the air for a very long time to make it 72-71 just inside two minutes left to play. Cincy never scored again. Darthard added to free throws to make it 74-71 with 14 seconds left. On the final miss by Cincinnati, Darthard got the final rebound to seal the victory.

Darthard scored 18 points. Moore and Soares scored 16 points, Klanjscek scored 7, Godwin scored 6, Oweh scored 6, Northweather scored 3 and Uzan scored 2. Uzan did have a rough game as he had many shots just bounce around the rim and not go in. He was in foul trouble as well. But the Sooners overcame.

This game was won at the free throw line and by going to the bucket. Repeatedly.

The Sooners played the game without McCollum (day-to-day), Hugley IV (day-to-day) and with Uzan having an off game. And they still won. They won their 20th game of the season.

Congrats to the Sooners. And I hope they heal quickly as Soares looked very gimpy on one leg by the end of the game also. The Sooners play in Austin on Saturday in the final conference game for the Sooners this year. The Sooners are 8-9, Texas is with the Longhorns also being 8-9 after losing to Baylor on Monday night.

Boomer Sooner!