Oklahoma vs. Kansas State: Sooners Hoping to Avoid Road Trap Game
By Chip Rouse
The next stop on the Sooners road to a potential Big 12 championship and a top seed in the NCAA Tournament comes on Saturday with Oklahoma vs. Kansas State.
It will be a homecoming for Oklahoma head coach Lon Kruger, who played his collegiate ball at Kansas State, where he was a two-time Big Eight Player of the Year (1973 and 1974) and led the Wildcats to back-to-back conference championships in 1972 and 1973. He also led his alma mater as K-State head coach in the early part of his career.
In four seasons as Kansas State’s head coach, Kruger won 81 games, including leading the Cats to a second-place finish in the Big Eight behind Oklahoma in 1987-88 and an Elite Eight appearance that season in the NCAA Tournament, where K-State lost to Kansas, which went on to defeat heavily favored Oklahoma in the national championship game.
This will be the second game between the Sooners and the Wildcats this season in the Big 12’s home-and-home round-robin schedule. Oklahoma won the first contest, played in early January in Norman, by a score of 86-76.
Kansas State (13-9, 2-7) ranks near the bottom of the Big 12 in scoring, averaging 71.9 points a game, but they only give up an average of 67.3 points per contest on the defensive end. In Oklahoma, the Wildcats are going up against the most potent offense in the Big 12 and the fourth highest scoring team in the nation. The Sooners are averaging 85.8 points a game through all games, and they are right at that scoring figure in nine Big 12 games this season.
K-State’s Bramlage Coliseum is one of the more difficult places to play in the Big 12 for visiting teams, and it will be packed and loud when the Sooners and Wildcats meet on Saturday. Kansas State is 11-2 at home this season, the two losses coming against West Virginia in double overtime and Iowa State.
Kansas State has three players scoring in double figures and six averaging 8.0 points or better in Big 12 Conference play. Freshman guard Barry Brown and junior forward Wesley Iwundu lead the Wildcats in scoring, averaging 11.4 and 11.3 points a game, respectively, in league action. Another freshman, Kamu Stokes, was averaging just a tick under 11 points a game, but injured his knee in K-State’s win over Ole Miss in a Big 12-SEC Challenge contest last weekend and will not be available for Saturday’s game with OU.
Kruger is 4-5 against his alma mater since taking over the coaching duties at Oklahoma. He won in his first trip to Manhattan, Kan., as the Oklahoma head coach in 2012, but the Sooners have lost in three road trips to K-State since. This year’s Sooner team is easily the best Kruger has brought to his old stomping grounds, however, in his five seasons at OU.
Sooner All-American Buddy Hield would like nothing better to lead his Oklahoma teammates to a season sweep over K-State in his final college season. Hield scored 31 points the last time the two teams met, and Jordan Woodard added another 19. Woodard and Hield are No. 1 and 2 nationally in three-point shooting percentage on a Sooner team that collectively shoots a nation-best 46.2 percent from three-point range.
Oklahoma made 11 of 19 three-pointers in the Sooners’ January victory over Kansas State. That was just one of 15 times out of 21 games this season OU has made 10 or more treys in a game.
The top-ranked Sooners also have eclipsed the 80-point level 15 times this season. Kansas State’s ability to slow down the pace of the game on Saturday and limit the OU transition game, which is one of the best in the country, will be a key factor if the Wildcats are able to pull off the upset over top-ranked Oklahoma.
Three Things to Watch for in This Game
- The three-point shot has been the Sooners big offensive weapon all season long. Four Oklahoma starters shoot 40-percent or better from beyond the three-point arc, with Buddy Hield and Jordan Woodard hitting better than 50 percent from long range. If the Sooners are able to sustain their incredible shooting performance when launching the three-ball against the K-State defense, it will be difficult for the Wildcats to keep pace with the high-scoring Oklahoma offense.
- In the first game between the two teams this year, Oklahoma scored 24 transition points to just two for Kansas State. The Sooners also committed a season-high 20 turnovers, which they absolutely can’t do on the road at K-State if they want to garner their 20th win of the season.
- Oklahoma leads the Big 12 in rebounding. The Sooners, who held a 44-36 advantage over Kansas State in their last meeting, are 15-0 this season when outrebounding their opponent.
My pick: Oklahoma 75, Kansas State 68 – Kansas State wants to play this game in the 70s or, even better, the 60s. That will be a tall order against the high-scoring Oklahoma offense. OU is 5-2 this season in true road games, its two losses coming in the closing seconds at Kansas and Iowa State. This is a perfect trap game for the Sooners. I expect Kansas State to keep this game close, but Oklahoma is more experienced and more talented and, in the end, it is that combination that will win this game.