Sooners Women's BB @ UT-Arlington in a "Get-Right" Game Today!

[OUBeliever56A]

The Oklahoma Sooners Women' Basketball Team is midway through their 4-game road trip and will be in Arlington, TX today to play UT-Arlington at 3:30 PM today in the 3rd of the 4 games. After returning from Utah with a win and a loss, The #16 ranked Sooners are 3-1 on the season and in many ways need to get their season rolling on a smoother path. The Sooners have been on a roller coaster this year.

* In their exhibition game against Emporia State they played a poor 1Q then rebounded with 3 good quarters.
* In their first game against ORU, they played a great 1Q and a good 2Q but were outscored by 19 in the second half.
* Against SMU, they played their best game as they won each quarter and won by 21 points.
* In Provo, UT, Oklahoma played a poor first half (mostly poor shooting) before rebounding to outscore BYU 61-32 in the second half for the win.
* Against Utah, in the second of back-to-back games, they were outscored in each quarter but were not out of the game until the 3rd quarter when they were outscored by 21 points in that quarter.
* That reflection has the Sooner Women playing 9 good quarters and 11 poor ones.

Unfortunately, the road to Arlington does not provide a lot of relief for the Sooners. Last year UT-Arlington made the NCAA playoffs and lost to Iowa State 78-71 in the first round. the Mavericks return 3 players from that team plus they have added 3 transfers to add to the returners that make up their top 6 players in minutes played. To me the biggest concern is the experience on the floor for the Mavericks. UT-Arlington is laying 4 Fifth-Year players a Redshirt-SR and a JR. They range form 5'9" to 6'3" with 3 six-footers. The Sooners will be out-sized today and even out-experienced which is something to say.

The leading scorer last season was Jacobs, a 6'2" forward. In 21-22 she scored 21.0 a game with 6.6 rebounds a game. She is the 3rd leading scorer so far this year. In 22-22, Washington, a transfer from Arkansas State, is averaging 17.3 with 4 rebounds as a guard. The Mavericks are averaging 83.7 points a game this year. That means that the game will be played at a fast pace today. Usually I think that is a good thing for Coach Baranczyk's team. Today, I am not sure. I think the Sooners will shoot more 3's today than UT-Arlington, but they better shoot them well as every trip on the offensive end needs to be used wisely. I think UT-Arlington has the edge on the boards today and the Sooners might have trouble matching up defensively against UT-Arlington in a man-to-man scheme. I am still not real convinced that the zone employed by Coach Baranczyk is as effective as it needs to be down low against a post-driven team.

Today is an early "get-right" game for the Sooners against a quality team. It could show the strengths of the Sooners and it could show the weaknesses also. I hope the strengths outshine the weaknesses at the end of the game. OU has to find an inside presence today I think. Something to build upon in today's game and as the season goes on. I am looking for a strong game from Williams, Robertson and Llanusa today. The Sooners need that I think. Between Tot, Vann, Joens and maybe L. Scott, R. Scott and maybe Johnson-Culliton, the Sooners need some complimentary help for the big three.

I will be watching at 3:30 PM on ESPN+.

Here is the pre-game staff writers article about today's game.

https://soonersports.com/sports/womens- ... ath=wbball

Good luck to the Women today!

Boomer Sooner!

[AustinTXSooner]

I watched the game today. We won 89-80. There were a lot of things to like about the game. There was one big thing not to like...turnovers. We had 29 turnovers. I'm not surprised. There were a LOT of bad passes. To be honest, they were mostly aggressive. Trying to score in transition, etc. But way too many. We have to take better care of the basketball. I will say the turnovers were pretty spread out. A lot of players with 2, 3, or 4. Nobody with more than that.

It was good to see Llanusa break out a little bit. I feel like she's been struggling offensively this year. She had a small stretch where she looked like the Ana of old. Skylar Vann had a double-double. 14 pts and 12 rebounds. Robertson led the team with 21 points. 5-9 from 3 pt and 6-6 from the free throw line.The free throws were all at the end of the game. Williams (16), Tot (11), and Scott (10) were the rest of the double-digit scorers.

On defense, we played a lot of zone. I think that was because UTA gets most of their points in the paint. The zone kept a defensive player in the lane pretty much all of the time.

It was a good win. UTA was a tournament team last year.

[OUBeliever56A]

I agree with 'AustinTXSooner' about all of his points. The Sooners hustle on defense and their focus on rebounding and their good shooting offset the extremely high turnover number and still manage to win the game.

Here are my thoughts about the game quarter-by-quarter rundown of the game.

The Oklahoma Sooners Women’s Basketball Team played better on Sunday afternoon as they defeated UT-Arlington by the score of 89-80. The score is not a good indicator of how large the Sooner lead was for most of 3 quarters or how close the game became in the 4th quarter.

After the first quarter the score was 21-15 in favor of the Sooners. They were playing well as a team as they were hustling on defense and rebounding well but they had 8 turnovers which robbed the Sooners of valuable scoring opportunities.

In the second quarter, Oklahoma ran their lead to as many as 19 points with 4:35 left in the half at 40-21. From that point, though UT-Arlington rallied back to outscore OU 15-8 over the remainder of the 2Q to produce the halftime score of 48-36 in favor of the Sooners. Oklahoma was shooting 50% from the floor at halftime and had pulled down 29 rebounds. But the turnovers kept adding up as the Sooners had 13 of them by halftime. UT-Arlington had scored 14 points off those turnovers to keep themselves in the game.

The Mavericks of UT-Arlington climbed their way back into the game even further in the 3Q. They outscored Oklahoma 22 to 17 in the quarter to narrow the lead to 7 points. Right before the end of the quarter, OU committed their 23rd turnover as UT-Arlington transitioned to score a bucket to make the score 65-58. As the buzzer went off, Llanusa made a 3-point shot that briefly put OU up 68-58. But after a review the bucket was waived-off as she released the ball after the buzzer.

In the first two and half minutes of the 4Q, UT-Arlington made it a 1point deficit at 67-66 as they outscored OU 8 to 2. Oklahoma’s only bucket in that time was a Vann two=pointer after an offensive rebound. From that point until the 3:25 mark the game was within a 3-point difference with UT-Arlington taking a 1-point lead at 73-74 on a layup. But Vann scored for the Sooners t make the score 75-74 for the Sooners at the 3:25 mark. Williams nailed a 3-pointer on an assist from Tot to give the Sooners a 4-point lead before UT-Arlington made 2 free throws to make the score 78-76. The Sooners scored 5 straight points on a Tot 3-pointer and a Vann 2-pointer to take the lead 83-76 with 1:05 left in the game. Robinson sank 6 free throws for Oklahoma down the stretch to outscore 6-4 and produce the 89-80 final score.

Robertson had her best game of the season for the Sooners as she scored 21 points on 5 three’s and 6 of 6 free shots in the game. Williams added 15 and 6 rebounds in a solid supporting role of Robertson. Vann earned her first double-double of the season with 14 points and 12 rebounds in her best overall effort of the season. She was very effective inside during the game and rebounded very well. Tot added 11 with Liz Scott adding 10 points and 9 rebounds to round out 5 Sooners in double figures. The Sooners outrebounded UT-Arlington 44 to 34 for a strong team performance inside. OU also had 9 blocks in th game, mostly provided by Johnson as the 6’3” F/C tallied 4 blocks inside. The big ‘gap’ in the Sooners game on Sunday was those turnovers. The Sooners had 29 turnovers. The Sooners countered their poor passing and ball handling with a superb shooting night at 52.6% from the field including 42.1% from 3-point range and 74.1% from the charity stripe.

Turning in strong defensive efforts for the Sooners were Llanusa and Tucker. Llanusa also added 7 points on 3 of 4 shooting on the night.

The win was a good win for the Sooners despite those 29 turnovers. But that extremely high number must be improved upon by the Sooners. The Sooners are now 4-1 on the season. It will be interesting to see if the lopsided loss to Utah on the road will drop the Sooners out of the Top 25 in the rankings this week.

Oklahoma returned home after the game only to have a day of practice on Monday before traveling to Arkansas State for their fourth road game in a row in Jonesboro, AR in NE Arkansas for a 7:30 PM tipoff.

Here is the staff writers article about the Sunday afternoon win over UT-Arlington.

https://soonersports.com/news/2022/11/2 ... -lady-mavs

Boomer Sooner!