Oklahoma Men's BB: Travels to West Virginia - Need of a Road Win

[OUBeliever56A]

The Oklahoma Men's Basketball Team travels to Morgantown, WV on Saturday to play West Virginia in what could be a Must-Have Win on the Road. Both, the Sooners and the Mountaineers are 2-7 in the Big 12 Conference as they start the second go-around in the Big 12. Earlier in the season, the Sooners defeated WV by one-point 77-76 in Norman. The win over West Virginia is the best win that the Sooners have had in the Big 12 this season.

The game tips-off at 7 PM and will be televised on ESPNews and ESPN2 about thirty minutes into the game. Chuckie Kempf and King McClure on the ESPN-network 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.

Here is the staff writers preview article about the game.

https://soonersports.com/news/2023/2/3/ ... morgantown

In the first game in Norman, OU won the game mainly due to a 10-point advantage on made free shots. That will surprise most fans. OU made 18 of 25 while WV made 8 of 16 free shots.

As always the game will be determined by the performance of the players. Both teams are capable of winning. WV seems to have more scorers, while OU is more dependent upon 2 or 3 scorers to carry the offense. WV may have 5 or 6 players that can carry the offense. OU has to play well inside on defense and on the perimeter against the 3-point shot on Saturday. OU was successful at slowing down the three's by WV in the first game.

The win is almost a must-have win. Most post-season predictors think that OU must get to 7 wins in the Big 12 to make it to post-season play. That requires 5 wins in the next 9 games. The WV game is a great way to start that play with a win. It will be hard to win other road games left on the schedule. Those road games are in Waco, Austin, Ames and Manhattan.

Good luck to the Sooners on Saturday.

Boomer Sooner!

[White River]

WV leads 56 to 30 at the half.

[SoonerTony]

It looks like they’ve given up.

Maybe they haven’t but it sure appears that way.

[soonerTroll2]

I see no more than two wins the rest of the season. It's a tough league, but the ship is sinking for Porter Moser. How low will the team sink?
The sky's the limit.

[OUBeliever56A]

Saturday evening in Morgantown, WV was a tough place to play for the Oklahoma Sooners. It is interesting to me that the Mountaineers, with their identical 2-7 mark in the Big 12 and a 13-10 overall records had a packed house to support their team and was ready to loudly voice their approval of the team's play. I don't think that many of the fans in the crowd would say that that WV has had a good season, so far. But they were there in the stands to support their team. I wonder if that effort by the fans should be 'dually noted' in Norman, OK.

West Virginia started quickly and played very well to win big over the Oklahoma Sooners 93 - 61.

When the best player on what is supposed to be a good team the results are usually pretty good. That is just what happened for West Virginia last night. Eric Stevenson, the shooting guard for WV shot the ball very well all game and scored a game-high 34 points on 13 of 23 shots included 6 made 3's. OU had difficulty stopping Stevenson all night. It is interesting, that in OU's win over WV in Norman earlier in the year that Stevenson only scored 9 points.

OU and Coach Moser made a change in the lineup with Bijan Cortes moving into the starting lineup with Jacob Groves moving to a sub role. Going to a smaller lineup for the Sooners was probably intended to help the Sooners 'run' with the ball and play faster as opposed to the grind it out offensive scheme. Well, that was a change that did not yield a big result on Saturday. Cortes did as he asked and the tempo was up for the Sooners, But the inside play of T Groves and Godwin were challenged by the bigger WV players inside and as often happens, OU was too quickly in foul trouble inside. Both T Groves and Godwin fouled out of the game after playing 25 minutes in the game between the two centers. Oweh and Bamisile both played more minutes against WV also. they provided 18 much needed points and 7 rebounds. Grant Sherfield scored 16 points to lead the Sooners.

OU shot 37% in both halves of the game from the field. WV shot 54% in the first half and built up a 26-point lead. They shot 39% in the second half. WV outrebounded OU by 13 boards. WV scored 24 points off of OU turnovers and 22 second chance points. OU scored 20 total in the same categories. WV won the game in every way.

Here is the staff writers article about the loss to West Virginia on Saturday.

https://soonersports.com/news/2023/2/4/ ... morgantown

The Sooners dropped to 2-8 in the Big 12 and 12-11 overall. The Sooners are in 9th place in the Big 12. The Sooners have lost 5-straight games in the Big 12. The only bright spot as of late was the surprising upset of Alabama in LNC last Saturday.

To me it looks like the Sooners are likely to match up against either West Virginia or maybe Oklahoma State in the Big 12 tourney 'play-in' game that the 7th-10th seeds has to play. That means that the Sooners will have to win four games in the Big 12 Tourney in 4 days to win the Big 12 Tourney. I wish I felt that the matchups with WV or OSU looked more favorable also.

The next four games for the Sooners are at Baylor, at home vs Kansas, at home vs Kansas State and then at Texas. That is a tough stretch. That is a tough set of teams to try and find yourself as a team and as a Coach and the strategy to play the game in the later part of the conference schedule.

Good luck to the men as they prepare for Baylor on Wednesday.

Boomer Sooner!

[SoonerTony]

OU fans were very loud for the Alabama game and then packed Lloyd Noble full on Wednesday night for bedlam. They would have been very loud again if the team had bothered to show up - at all. Fan support is the least of this team’s problems.

The Groves brothers played a combined total of 23 minutes last night and gathered a total of ZERO rebounds. That’s mind boggling. No rebounds at all for either of them.