Oklahoma Basketball Entering Extremely Slippery Slope
By Chip Rouse
They say that blowout losses are easier to laugh off and recover from than close encounters, but the Oklahoma basketball loss to Florida on Saturday can’t be dismissed that casually.
The Sooners were absolutely manhandled by the visitors from Florida and handed an ugly 84-52 defeat in their own building. The 32-point home loss was the worst by an Oklahoma men’s basketball team dating all the way back to 1922, when OU was a member of the Missouri Valley Intercollegiate Athletic Conference.
When head coach Lon Kruger, the quintessence of an eternal optimist, struggles to find something positive or instructional to gain from the game, you know that times are quickly becoming dire.
It wasn’t just that Florida, undeniably a better team than this season’s Sooner men’s squad, handily beat Oklahoma, but rather the manner in which was accomplished.
There really wasn’t anything the Sooners did well on Saturday. Because of that, the game began to get out of hand before the clock had wound down to halftime. Oklahoma actually led 20-18 with 8:22 to go in the opening half. Over those final eight minutes, the Gators outscored the Sooners 25-8 to open up a 15-point halftime lead at 43-28.
That momentum carried over into the second half for Florida, as the Gators scored the first seven points after intermission to extend their lead to a commanding 22 points. At that stage of the contest, Florida blown a hole through the roof of the Lloyd Noble Center with a 32-8 run on the home team.
Asked after the game how the wheels came off so suddenly on the OU offense and for such a long span of time, Kruger would have probably liked to avoid the question but explained: “It started with not making shots, but we’ve got to be able to play through that.
“When you’re not making shots, that affects everything else.” — Head coach Lon Kruger on OU’s worst home loss in over nine decades
“When you’re not making shots, that affects everything else,” said the Sooner head coach, who previously coached for six seasons at Florida (1990-96). “(When) you’re making shots, you’re going to be a little more active defensively. You’re going to be a little more active on the boards. Everything is working a little better.”
The Sooners struggled finding the shooting range all afternoon and ended up with a season-worst 18 for 65 shooting, which translates to a miserable 28-percent shooting percentage. They missed all six of their three-point shots in the first half and connected on just one of 10 three-point attempts in the second stanza.
Jordan Woodard failed to score in the game and has a total of two points in OU’s last two games. When your leading scorer is averaging 17 points a game but scores only two points combined in two games, you know you are going to be pedaling up a steep hill, and on Saturday that hill became riddled with potholes.
In fairness to Woodard, though, he told the Sooner coaches before the game on Saturday that he wasn’t feeling well. The OU senior leader missed four games earlier in the season with a groin pull and an undisclosed illness.
“It’s disappointing for sure,” Kruger said about his team’s drastic drop-off after playing the last several games so close. “We’ve been making good progress in a lot of ways. The last couple of losses have been very disappointing. We fought them hard. Today, we didn’t lock in there and compete for that result.”
The Sooners won’t have much time to get their heads on straight and get things fixed from Saturday’s blowout loss. Bedlam rival Oklahoma State comes calling on Monday. And with the Cowboys comes the momentum of having won their last three games by an average 20-point margin.