Winning on the road in the Big 12 is difficult at best and mandatory to win a championship. Just ask Oklahoma basketball coach Lon Kruger.
“It’s no surprise. It was a hard-fought game,” the OU head coach said after watching his team hold on for a too-close-for comfort, two-point Bedlam win over in-state rival Oklahoma State on the road in Stillwater Wednesday night. “Watching tapes of them (OSU) throughout the year, the thing that stood out is how hard they’ve competed and how hard they’ve fought.”
That was certainly in evidence throughout the game Wednesday night as Oklahoma State climbed back from a 15-half first-half deficit and came razor close to winning the game at the final buzzer. The No. 2-ranked Sooners escaped with a 74-72 victory, their narrowest win of 14 this season against just one loss.
OSU freshman Juwan Evans did his best impression of Buddy Hield in the Sooners’ heartbreaking loss at Kansas, pouring in a career-high 42 points and putting his Cowboys’ team on his back, only to come up just short. Evans scored the Cowboys’ first dozen points in the game and had 19 points at the half. His 42-point output was the most ever by a freshman in Oklahoma State basketball history and the most ever scored by the Cowboys against Oklahoma.
"“He (Evans) just had a good pace and a good feel for the game,” said OU’s Hield in the postgame interview session. “He made some great plays and some tough shots. He’s a freshman, and you don’t expect him to make tough shots…Next game we play him, we just need to do a better job.”"
That next game will come Feb. 24 in Norman.
Hield got off to another hot start, opening up the scoring for the Sooners with a short turnaround jumper in the lane, and scored 20 of Oklahoma’s 43 first-half points, but the All-American wasn’t able to really get untracked in the second stanza, tallying just six points and committing the same number of turnovers.
Oklahoma was outscored by 10 points in the second half and shot just 35 percent over the final 20 minutes, well below the Sooners’ 48-percent season average. Meanwhile, Oklahoma State shot 48 percent for the game on 31 of 64, the second highest percentage against the Sooners this season (Iowa State shot 52 percent in a four-point loss to OU earlier this month).
The most troubling aspect of this big road win was the number of turnovers committed by the Sooners. After committing 19 turnovers against Kansas State last weekend, OU turned the ball over 20 times against Oklahoma State, and it came perilously close to costing the Sooners the game.
This is a huge concern with No. 11 West Virginia next up for Oklahoma. The Mountaineers’ 40-minutes-of-havoc, pressure defense leads the nation, averaging 20 forced turnovers per game. This is an especially troubling stat and one that the Sooners must address if they are going to win on Saturday and secure the top spot in both major polls come next week.
Oklahoma’s 20 turnovers Wednesday night resulted in 22 points for Oklahoma State. The Cowboys committed just 12 turnovers in the game, which is cause for concern at the other end of the turnover department, as well, because OU is the worst in the Big 12 in forcing opponents’ miscues on the defensive end.
A win is a win, as they say, but the game against Oklahoma State revealed several not-so-championship-caliber stats that could be knockout punches if not addressed before the one-and-done postseason commences.
- Buddy Hield is a sensational player, and when he is on his game, which is most of the time, he is virtually unstoppable on offense. But the Sooners’ National Player of the Year candidate is also human, as was in evidence in the second half against Oklahoma State. Hield lead all scorers at the half with 20 points, but had just six in the second half to go along with an equal number of turnovers.
- Oklahoma shot just 35 percent in the second half vs. Oklahoma State after shooting a blistering 57 percent in the opening 20 minutes. Credit the OSU defense for a good part of the Sooners’ second-half shooting woes, but when you shoot poorly and your turnover rate is high, that is a simple formula for defeat against good teams.
- Bench production: Oklahoma’s lack of depth and absence of bench production is eventually going to turn around and bite the Sooners. As the season wears on and the minutes continue to pile up on the OU starters, who are logging huge game minutes, fatigue is going to imperil Oklahoma both offensively and defensively late in the season and late in close games. The Sooner reserves are averaging around 17 points per game, but that has not been the case lately. OU got three points from its bench players against Oklahoma State. That’s not going to cut it going forward.
- One factor in Oklahoma State’s ability to shoot such an uncharacteristically high percentage against the OU defense on Wednesday night was the high number of shot opportunities at the rim. The Cowboys scored 63 percent of their points in the game, or 46 points, in the paint. That more than doubled the number of Oklahoma points in the paint (20).