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The Oklahoma Sooner Women's Basketball Team will hold its Annual Field Day game @ 10:30 AM on Wednesday in a game against Alabama State. Here is the Sooner staff writers article the game.

https://soonersports.com/news/2023/11/1 ... -wednesday

The 3-0 Sooners rose to No. 25 in the latest AP poll after opening the season without receiving votes in the preseason poll. OU was tabbed at No. 23 in the preseason WBCA coaches poll.

The game versus Alabama State should be win by a significant margin on Wednesday morning if Sooners set their alarm and do not hit the snooze button. The Sooners should be the better team by far. Hopefully the Sooners play the game against the game of Basketball and not against their opponent. to ensure a big win.

The game will air on ESPN+ with Chad McKee and Latricia Trammell on the call.

Boomer Sooner!

What is there to say about the Sooner Women's 92-46 victory over Alabama State? Well, it was very loud and it was, yeah, very loud. It is a great time for 1000s of school kids from elementary school to high school basketball teams to come to Norman and watch the Sooner Women play basketball. But for us folks over, let's say 60, it is distracting and very hectic as it is a bit difficult to watch the flow of the game and the action. But it a way for the OU "brand" to be spread among the youngsters of the area and state.

About the game, I guess it depends on your expectation of the team. Yes, they won as they doubled the scoring of Alabama State. Yes, the Sooners dominated on the boards 54 to 25. Those are good things, but I wonder if it means that the Sooners played good sound basketball. I think it is hard to come to that conclusion in many cases. As I did with the men's game against Texas State, I divided the game into eight 5-minute slices.

1Q - Score at 5:00 minutes - OU 10 - Bama St 8 = It was not a sterling start by the Sooners.
End of the 1Q = OU outscored Bama St 19-2 in the last five minutes of the 1Q to take the lead 29-10. Very good 5 minutes of play for the Sooners.
2Q - Score at 5:00 minutes - OU 39 - Bama St 20 = The first half of the 2Q was a tie, 10-10, again not a sterling slice of play.
End of the 2Q = A total of 8 points were scored by both teams with Oklahoma 'winning' 6-2. The score at half was 45-22.
3Q - Score at 5:00 minutes - OU 59 - Bama St 29 = OU outscored Bama St 14-7 in the 5 minutes. Okay?
End of the 3Q = Oklahoma led 66-30. In the 5 minutes OU scored 7 points to the 1 for Bama St. Defense was good, yes. Offense was slow.
4Q - Score at 5:00 minutes - OU outscored Bama St by the score of 13-9 in the 5 minutes. Again, not a great 5 minutes of play.
End of the 4Q = 92-46 as the Sooners outscored Bama St 13-7 in the final 5 minutes.

I will concede that when a team is obviously better than the other team that is tough to keep the foot pushed down on the peddle as hard as you can. But at times the Sooners do not eve have their foot on the pedal. i would say that OU played well enough in 4 of 8 of the five-minutes of play. I would say the Sooners played poor in 4 of the five-minute slices of the game. The Sooners really only played as they should play in 1 of those slices of time, the last five minutes of the 1Q.

Five Sooners scored in double digits. Vann had 16, Williams had 14, Scott had 13, Joens had 11 and Johnson had 10. Vann also pulled down 9 rebounds with 2 Sooners pulling down 7 rebounds, Williams and Verhulst. Scott, Allen and Johnson had 5 rebounds each. The post-trio (Culliton/Johnson/Allen) played a bunch as they played almost 43 minutes and scored 23 point and had 13 rebounds.

A high-point of the game was when Vann hit a pair of free throws with 4:22 left in the second quarter to become the 39th Sooner to eclipse 1,000 career points. Congratulations to Skylar Vann on her career accomplishment.

I thought the game was a bit strange in that Verhulst, Keys and Tot faded into the background of the play and had quiet games. Verhulst did have 9 points and 7 rebounds almost as an afterthought. Keys had 6 points, 3 boards and 2 steals as she always has energy and effort.

OU did not shoot well from 3-point land as they were 5 for 22 (22.7%) with Joens making 3 and Verhulst and Allen eachone. Oklahoma shot well pretty well from the floor at 47.1% and shot very well from the free shot line at 85.2% on 23 of 27 attempts. the 16 turnovers committed by OU was not high, but not low enough, i think, considering the opponent. The 20 steals, which was a new high for the Sooners in a 40-minute game, was a plus.

At times the defense was non-present inside as Bama State scored easily inside with undersized players against the Sooner front court players, especially in the second half.

There are still too any trips down the floor with 2 passes and a quick 3 with no Sooners anywhere near a rebound chance, too many times where they try to make passes to a running player too late on fast breaks, too many times where they simple miss a post player with position down low who do not receive the ball. I wish I saw a 'plan' more of the time other than just 'play fast'. Maybe I would be happy with the phrase, "play fast smartly - always".

The Sooners are 4-0 and are working on becoming a better more consistent team.

On Sunday the Sooners travel to Charlottesville, VA to play Virginia (ACC) in a 1 p.m. CT tip-off on the road. Virginia is 3-0 with three 24+ wins on the season. They look to be a solid team and will force Oklahoma to play well to win their 2nd game of the season against a Power 5 team on the road. The game will be on the ACC Network.

Boomer Sooner!