Oklahoma Men's Basketball looks to go 4-0 on young 23-24 Season!

[OUBeliever56A]

The Oklahoma Sooner Men's Basketball Team will host UT-Rio Grande Valley Men's Basketball Team on friday evening at Lloyd Noble Center for a 7 PM tipoff. The Sooners are 3-0 and playing well in the young season as they have outscored their opponents by a total of 108 points in their 3 games. The Sooners have averaged 88 pts/game on offense and allowed only 52 pts/game.

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

https://soonersports.com/news/2023/11/1 ... -on-friday

The non-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 Chad McKee and Kevin Henry announcing and be broadcast by ESPN+ with John Rooney (PxP) and Bryndon Manzer (analyst) on the call.

UT-Rio Grande Valley is 1-2 on the season and have played a future opponent of the Sooners, the TCU Horned Frogs. They lost to TCU by the score of 88-55. I think a couple of mini-goals of tonight's games would be to defeat UTRGV by at least 33 points and to continue this high scoring offense by scoring at least the 88 points they have averaged this season.

UTRGV is lead by two forwards and two guards. All four are JRs or SRs. Their leading scorer is a 6'1" Guard, Elliott (#01) who averages 21.0 pts/game. OU will need to pay attention to him and slow him down with strong defense. For a change, I think OU has several options to fill that role with a good fast defensive guard. The two inside players are 6'7" and 6'8" who are Freeman (#11) and Williams (#15). together they average 24.0 pts/game and 12.0 rebounds. The fourth player is a 5'10" Guard, (#03) Tripler Jr. I am looking forward to what has to be a quick 5'10" guard and McCollum play against each other. The quickness will be evident if my guess is right. I will also be watching how the Sooner 'bigs' (Moore, Godwin, Hughley IV, Northweather and maybe Soares) match up against the two bigs for UTRGV.

The Sooners have played well so far for Coach Moser. They are deep this season with quick, two-way players who can play and seem to be complimenting each other so far this season. It is worth the price of admission to go see the team.

OU should win the game tonight, hopefully they will keep playing their game and up to the level they need to and not play down to the level of their opponent. Good luck tonight to the team.

Boomer Sooner!

[OUBeliever56A]

The Oklahoma Sooners played well, perhaps not as well as they had the other three games, but well. They won 90-66 over UT-Rio Grande Valley in a game that was very quick and athletic up and down the floor when the referees allowed the game to be played. But much of the game was too filled with ticky-tack fouls and even imagined fouls called that slowed the game to a crawl watching players shoot free throws at times.

I was wanting to see the matchup with Tipler Jr and McCollum, two small very quick players. We got that and more with Elliott also joining Tripler on the court for UTRGV. The matchups with McCollum, Uzan and Darthard was fun to watch. The two guards led UTRGV in scoring with 29 points between them. Abdul-Hakim was playing the Magic Johnson point-forward role for UTRGV which was handled fairly well by OU and the inside game was won by OU almost all night. Almost every bucket by UTRGV was challenged and hard for UTRGV to be successful.

For OU, I thought that for times during the game, the offense was not smooth. Oklahoma had trouble moving the ball from one player to the next due to the overplaying of the UTRGV players in the passing lanes and being able to cut of the dribble movement by OU. That cause OU to become a one-on-one team at times. At least this year, the Sooners have players who can create shots and be successful doing so. I thought that Uzan was 'forced' to shoot a little too much last night with 15 shots. His game is to pass and shoot when necessary. And unfortunately, he only made 3 of those 15 shots and was 0-5 from three-point territory. But Uzan is good and it is okay to have an off-game or two. I thought the players tended to stand and watch the other player dribble last night instead of back-cutting and going to set a pick. The Sooners had to figure out how to play towards the basket instead of around the arc last night. they did that better as the night played on.

Here is the Sooner staff writers article about the win.

https://soonersports.com/news/2023/11/1 ... trgv-90-66

OU shot pretty well last night with 7 of 23 made from 3-point land (304%) and 26 for 45 inside the arc (57.8%) and 81.0% from the free throw line at 17 for 21. UTRGV did shoot six more free throws last night, but that occurred late in the game due to the manner in which the game was called by the referees.

OU scored 50 points in the paint. None were better than the two-hand dunk by Jalon Moore between to UTRGV players as both of them swatted at the ball and got arms and hands but Moore's ability to hold on and throw the dunk down with force was impressive. Godwin also had an offensive board stuff, maybe two in the game. Godwin had 12 rebounds with 7 offensive boards.

I was surprised to see that OU only had 13 turnovers. There were times in the first half that I thought Coach Moser was going to explode on the sidelines during a couple of turnovers. At times OU looked like the goal was to play 'hot-potato' - here you take the ball I am tired of this pressure. a few of those resulted in turnovers.

I agree with posters above that Hugley IV, Darthard and Soares played really well 'off the bench', especially for a while in the second half. Hugley IV scored 16, Soares 15, Darthard had 13. Oweh picked up 14 on only 5 shots but had 5 free throws. McCollum had 11 but was only 1 of 5 from 3-point range after making his first one, I believe.

While the Sooners did not pick up a win to match TCU's win over the UTRGV (88-55), the 90-66 score is an indication that OU is in the ball park with TCU. And who, as a Sooner fan, can complain about 4 wins, with four games scoring in the 80's or better (88.5 points/game) and a defense that has only allowed one team to score 60, ((55.5 points/game). Having an average of four Sooners scoring in double digits per game on average is a good sign as well.

Next up for OU, is the Rady Children's Invitational in San Diego next Thursday and Friday in back-to-back games with Iowa (Big 10) up first and then USC or Seton Hall up next the following day. The depth of OU should help, the athleticism of OU should help.

- Iowa is 3-1 - Lost to Creighton by 8 with three easy wins. Iowa has scored at least 84 points in each game.
- USC is 2-1 - Lost to UC-Irvine and they play Brown on Sunday. USC defeated K-State by 13 points.
- Seton Hall 3-0 - Won ny 11, 30 and 25. They play on today against Wagner.

Boomer Sooner!

[EMan]

It was definitely a sloppy game at times for OU. Not an overall crisp outing for sure. But with the game tied at 25 with 8:11 to go, the Sooners ran off a 22-8 spurt that pretty much put them in control the rest of the way. And I'll say it again, there's absolutely no denying this year's team is vastly more athletic than either of Moser's first two teams. I love the quicker pace they're playing at. It's a much more fun style of play to watch, and I believe fits the team Porter has put together. For "Weird Stat of the Game", the Sooners were 17-17 at the FT line at one point, then missed 4 in a row. Go figure.

[OU Guy]

Yes, they had to work harder for thos game. But bankimg some early games is good later in spring when fighting for 64 spots. Big test vs Iowa coming