Sooner Men's BB hosts West Virginia on Saturday @ 11 AM in LNC !

[OUBeliever56A]

The Oklahoma Sooner Men's Basketball Team returns to their home court on Saturday and plays West Virginia at 11 AM in a DH-Day with the Women's Team who plays Kansas at 2 PM in Lloyd Noble Center.

Oklahoma enters the game with West Virginia with a 1-3 conference record and a 10-6 record overall. West Virginia is 0-4 in the conference and 10-6 overall. Both teams need a win on Saturday.

Here is the staff writers article about the matchup on Saturday.

https://soonersports.com/news/2023/1/12 ... n-saturday

The game will be broadcast on ESPN2 with Chuckie Kempf and Tim Welsh 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.

- West Virginia has lost to K-State and Kansas who are 8-0 in the Big 12. They also lost to OSU and Baylor who are currently 2-6. All four games were close games however.
- OU has lost to Texas, Iowa State and Kansas by a total of 8 points. Those three teams are 11-1 in the Big 12. OU defeated Tech in OT by 5 points.

To me, the game will be decided inside and/or with the 5th/6th players in the game. West Virginia usually starts 3 Forwards and 2 Guards. WV has a 6'4" guard (Stevenson) that averages 13.8 PPG and a 6'9" forward (Mitchell) that averages 13.4 PPG and 6.0 boards. The three other starters usually are F 6'7" (Matthews) 10.3 PPG, G 6'3" (Kedrian Johnson) with 9.2 PPG and F 6'10" (Bell) with 5.9 PPG and 5.8 boards. Their sixth player is G 6'0" (Toussaint) who averages 10.3 PPG. Toussaint plays more minutes than Bell on average.

I think that the Sooners will match up Jalen Hill with Mitchell 6'9" F. Milos Uzan will likely match up with Stevenson G 6'4". I think initially that Tanner Groves will match up with Bell F 6'10" and Jacob Groves will match up with Matthews F 6'7". That will leave Sherfield to match up with Johnson G 6'3". When Toussaint G 6'0" enters the game, OU will likely follow with Cotes or Noland entering the game in place of one of the Tanner brothers to play 2 F and 3 guards also.

Outside of the 6 players above for West Virginia thay play 3 others 12 to 15 minutes a game. Two guards and a forward. WV plays a total of 9 players regularly while OU lays primarily 8 players a game.

I think the Tanner Brothers, Hill and Godwin will have to play well against the inside presence of WV with 4 players for each team involved. Fouls will important to track as always. OU's ability to slow down Stevenson and Johnson (Kedrian) outside will be important. I think how OU counters when Johnson enters the game is going to be key.

WV scores and allows about 10 more points per game than OU. OU does shoot a bit better however. WV pulls down about 4 more rebounds than OU with 11 offensive boards per game. The turnovers, steals and assist are similar also.

There are once again many similarities in the two teams. The game will likely boil down to who plays best and which team finds a hot player that does something above what they normally do. Expect a 3 or 4 point game that will likely be decided late.

Good luck to the Sooners on Saturday.

Boomer Sooner!

[White River]

Sooners lead by 2 at half. T Groves got his second personal foul with over 8 minutes to go in the first half. First foul was a charging call that was one of those that could go either way. Porter blew up on the official and got a technical arguing the call. You could tell the official was ticked and almost tossed Porter. That same official quickly called Tanner for his second on a true "Phantom Foul." It was more like T Groves got a personal foul because the official was making a personal statement. So much for the theory that the squeaky wheel gets the grease.

[gcruse7]

I didn't get to watch any of the game, but I did see that the Sooners shot and made a lot more FT than WV. In a 1 point victory, every one of those was needed. Maybe in the end, Coach Moser got his point across.

This team does not seem to play boring games. Win or lose, they are always close!

[SwampSooner]

Sooners win 77-76. They gave WVU an open 3-pt shot with less than a second to go for the closeness of the margin (you don't want to chance a phantom call to give them a 4 pt play).

[OU Guy]

The fouls were actually even this game - except at end due to intentional fouls by WVU behind.

Every game will see bad calls and I think we all agree thats not the issue. Its the disparity of calls over time going against OU. This game was more even (bad calls notwithstanding) and perhaps the T worked as we didn’t get shafted down the stretch at key moments.

This team has to learn not to give up leads in last 5 minutes. Have to find a way to incease leads so the endings aren’t so close (and thus allow refs to maybe be part of game).

But overall it seems we got equal reffing so lets hope that trend continues. That loss to Kansas was bad given the big lead we had so its progress we pulled this one out.

[OUBeliever56A]

The Oklahoma Sooner Men's Basketball Team defended their home court on Saturday in an 11 AM ESPN2 televised game 77-76 win over West Virginia. The Sooners raised their Big 12 record to 2-3 and 11-6 overall with the win. The Mountaineers made an uncontested 3-pointer as the buzzer sounded to make the game a 1-point final score. The Sooners never trailed in the game and led for 34:40 minutes of the game.

Here is the staff writers article about the game.

https://soonersports.com/news/2023/1/14 ... untaineers

Both teams shot the ball extremely well on Saturday. OU shot 55.6% from the field while WV shot 56.4%. The breakdown of shooting looked like this.

- OU - 16 of 25 from inside the arc for 64% and 9 of 20 on 3's for 45%. OU made 18 of 25 from the FT Line -72%
- WV - 25-42 from inside the arc for 59.4% and 6 of 13 on 3's for 46.2%. WV made 8 of 16 from the FT line -50%

It looks like OU actually was able to win the game at th efree throw line by making 10 more than WV as WV committed 22 fouls to OU's 16. IMO, OU played much smarter on defense on Saturday as they seemed to try to avoid fouling inside to not pick up the troubling fouls we have seen this year. Coach Moser 'blew a gasket' after one particular foul called against Tanner Groves right after Grove was mugged and hogtied on a shot attempt on the other end of the court. I think Coach Moser did get his point across however. I thought his prtest was appropriate and timely.

The game was fairly close most of the game as OU did lead by as much as 9 points in the 2nd half with 13:42 left in the game. West Virginia did battle back behind Mitchell and Toussaint however to make the game close. If OU could have avoided a few careless fouls down the stretch, the Sooners would have a bigger margin of victory and the fans could have breathed a bit easier.

I thought Sherfield, Hill, Uzan led the way for the Sooners in the game as Sherfield had 22 points, 4 rebounds and 5 assists. Hill had 14 points, 6 rebounds with Uzan scoring 11 points, 9 rebounds and 5 assists. Actually everyone that played for the Sooners played pretty well. About the only bad stat for the Sooners was the 14 turnovers which was slightly over their average on the season. OU impressively outrebounded WV by 10 boards - 29 to 19.

It was a good solid win for the Sooners at home. Interestingly enough, every big 12 Men's team that played at home on Saturday won.

WV 76 at OU 77
K-State 68 at TCU 82
Iowa State 60 at Kansas 62 - yes Kansas shot 10 more FTs and made 6 more than I-State.
OSU 58 at Baylor 74
Texas Tech 70 at Texas 72 - There were alot of points scored the last minute of the game with fouls and buckets. It was a wild finish in Austin w Texas never trailing.

The next game up for the Sooners (2-3 in conference and 11-6 overall) is Bedlam in Stillwater against Oklahoma State (1-4 in conference and 9-8 overall) Wednesday night at 8 PM with the game on ESPNU.

Good luck to the Sooners!

Boomer Sooner!