Oklahoma Basketball: Five Reasons Sooners Will Avenge Earlier Kansas Loss

All-American Buddy Hield came back to school for his senior season to win a Big 12 championship with his teammates and  for Oklahoma basketball.

The four-year Sooner starter and reigning Big 12 Player of the Year will have an opportunity on Saturday to move his team one step closer to that goal when Oklahoma takes on Kansas in front of a sellout crowd at the Lloyd Noble Center.

Oklahoma leads the Big 12 in scoring offense, averaging 84 points a game, but the third-ranked Sooners have scored well under that figure in their last two games.

The Sooners scored just 69 and 63 respectively, in splitting games against Kansas State and Texas in the past week. They will need to get their offense revved back up if they want to avenge the earlier triple-overtime loss at Kansas, a game may college basketball experts are calling the game of the season. Both teams had chances to win the earlier game, but it took three overtime sessions and, even then, it was not decided until the final second of the third overtime.

On Saturday, the scene shifts to Norman, Okla., with both Oklahoma and Kansas holding on to a share of the Big 12 lead with identical 7-3 records in conference play. West Virginia is the other team tied at the top after losing at Kansas on Tuesday. That win by the Jayhawks squared the season series with the Mountaineers after West Virginia took the first game, played in Morgantown, W. Va., in dominating fashion.

Oklahoma and Kansas are about as closely matched statistically as any two teams in the Big 12 this season. The two teams are at or close to the top of the league in scoring offense, field-goal percentage, field-goal percentage defense, three-point shooting percentage, and rebounding margin.

So what separates these teams? The answer is fairly simple if you are a Sooner fan: Oklahoma has Buddy Hield, and Kansas does not.

Here are five reasons why Oklahoma will win the rematch with 11-time defending Big 12-champion Kansas on Saturday:

• Buddy Hield – When you have college basketball’s second-best scorer nationally on your team and he averages nearly 26 points and a shooting percentage of 50 percent every game, you have a built-in advantage on your side.
• Buddy Hield, again – Like a bad penny, this superstar just doesn’t go away, and if you lose track of him on the defensive end, you are downright dead in the water because he will bury you…and quickly, with one of the quickest release points in the college game. If Kansas is going to slow down the OU All-American and prohibitive favorite to win National Player of the Year honors, the Jayhawks must limit – or, at the very least, contest his three-point shots. Hield is arguably the best in the country in shooting the three-ball. He leads the nation in three-pointers per game and he shoots an incredible 50 percent from long range. In the last contest between these two teams, the OU star scored 46 points, including 8 of 15 from behind the arc. You are not going to stop Buddy Hield – he is going to get his points – but the Jayhawks must make him work for every shot. The trouble is, he has improved greatly this season driving to the basket and picking up fouls when the three-point opportunities are not there. Oh, and by the way, he shoots better than 90 percent at the free-throw line.
• Lucky No. 13 – This showdown between arguably the two best teams in the Big 12 is on February 13. The Jayhawks have had Lady Luck on their side for what, 11 straight seasons and 11 consecutive conference titles. Well, that string is going to end this season, and the first nail in the Kansas coffin will be inserted at Lloyd Noble Center on Saturday. Kansas may be a perfect 11-0 at Allen Fieldhouse this season, but the Hawks are a more mortal 2-3 on the road in Big 12 Conference play. And to add insult to injury, the only other conference team that owns a perfect home record this season is…the Sooners, who are 12-0 at home and looking to add Lucky No. 13 with a big-time win on Saturday.
• Isaiah Cousins and Jordan Woodard – Cousins went through a shooting slump that lasted through several games earlier in the Big 12 portion of the schedule, but he has turned it around and has been a key contributor in the Sooners’ offensive attack. In his last six games, Cousins has averaged 16 points a game, including the game-winning shot against LSU that secured a two-point OU victory in a game in which the Sooners led for a total of just under three minutes the entire game. Woodard has been going through a similar offensive slump to what Cousins experienced earlier in the conference campaign. The junior OU point guard had just three points in the win over Texas on Monday, and in the game before that, at Kansas State, he went 0 for 6 from the floor, failing to score in what was his worst offensive game of the season. Look for the Sooners’ second leading scorer for most of the season (Woodard had been averaging over 15 points a game and for much of the season was the country best three-point scorer by percentage, to break out of his slump against Kansas – the team he scored 27 against the last time out, including 6 of 9 with the three-ball. With Hield being Hield, and if Cousins and Woodard perform even close to their capability vs. Kansas, that is just two many offensive weapons to contain in one ball game away from home if you are the visiting team.
• Battle of the boards and at the rim – Oklahoma is one of the best offensive teams in the country, but much of the Sooners’ success on the offensive end is created on the defensive end. OU leads the Big 12 in rebounding. In the triple-overtime game between Oklahoma and Kansas, however, the Sooners were outrebounded by Kansas 60 to 55. Ryan Spangler, the 6-8 senior Oklahoma forward, has been a beast on the defensive glass this season, leading the Big 12 in that category with over seven defensive rebounds per game. Spangler needs to have a big game against the Jayhawks. Oklahoma blocked 12 shots in the first game between these two teams, half of them contributed by OU’s Khadeem Lattin. Oklahoma’s ability to keep Kansas off of the offensive boards and create disruption at the rim by Lattin, and even 7-foot Akolda Manyang will go a long way toward delivering a Sooner victory.