Worrisome Weekend for Oklahoma Sooner Basketball

In a season when Oklahoma Sooner basketball has been mostly down for the men and mostly up for the women, this past weekend was like a bomb site for both programs.

The Sooner men were blown out of their own building in an 84-52 loss to Florida, and the Oklahoma women were hit by an avalanche over the final three quarters in a 92-58 blowout on the road against the second-ranked Baylor Bears.

If we didn’t know better, we would have sworn that someone snuck into both arenas and placed a lid over the Oklahoma basket. On Saturday the OU men could only make 18 of 65 shots for a miserable 28 percent. Twenty-four hours later the Sooner women suffered the same fate, connecting on just 20 of 77 shot attempts, an equally ugly 26-percent shooting effort.

When you shoot that poorly, safe to say you’re almost guaranteed not to win.

The Lady Sooners, no slouch in their own right, ranked 20th in last week’s Associated Press poll, actually got off the an excellent start against Baylor, leading 20-15 after one quarter. But that’s when the roof caved in, with Baylor taking control of the game over the final three quarters.

Baylor erased the five-point deficit entering the second quarter with a 15-0 run and outscored Oklahoma 30-12 in the quarter, a 23-point turnaround, to take a commanding 45-32 lead into halftime.

The Baylor onslaught continued in the second half, burying the OU women even further, by a 47-26 count, en route to a 34-point whiplashing.

Oklahoma featured a balanced scoring attack, as it has all season, with four Sooners scoring in double figures. But this time, OU could have had eight players in double figures and it wouldn’t have been enough against the high-powered Baylor women.

Senior guard Peyton Little paced Oklahoma with a team-high 15 points. Gabbi Ortiz had 10 points and 10 rebounds in the game.

For Baylor, Alexis Jones was a one man wrecking crew, delivering a game-high 24 points and a dozen rebounds.

Oklahoma was demolished in the paint. Baylor scored 60 of its 92 points at the rim and also capitalized on 17 Sooner turnovers, which the Bears turned into 27 points. The Lady Sooners launched 26 three-balls in the game, but misfired on 20 of them.

The one big difference between the OU men’s and women’s programs is in the won-loss column, however. The Sooner men are under water at 8-12 for the season. The Oklahoma women, on the other hand, are still well over .500 at 16-6. And in conference play, the Lady Sooners are now 7-3, while the men are struggling with just two Big 12 wins in eight conference games.

All things considered, it was an ugly, ugly weekend for Oklahoma basketball and one, I’m certain, both programs would just as soon forget.