Is Sooner Basketball Wearing Down as March Madness Ramps Up?
By Chip Rouse
Is the wear and tear of a long season and a lot of minutes on the court and at practice beginning to take its toll on the Sooner basketball squad?
My guess is yes, but you will never get head coach Lon Kruger or anyone on his veteran Oklahoma team to admit as much.
In the Sooners’ past two games, they have experienced late-game meltdowns that cost them a potential victory in one game and came precariously close on Tuesday to happening in a second successive game. It’s difficult to pinpoint a single cause for why this happened, but it would be hard to rule out fatigue as a big contributor.
February was a brutal month for Oklahoma basketball. The Sooners began the month with just two losses and as the top-ranked team in the country. Sadly, however, they dropped four of eight games played in February and could easily have lost two more were it not for some late heroics.
Teams will go through rough patches over a long season, even highly talented teams like this year’s Sooner starting five, which has played together in every game for three, and in two cases four, seasons. But what it is deeply concerning about Oklahoma’s recent woes is the way they are breaking down late in games, and over the last four-to-six games, it has become more than bad game or two, it has become a pattern.
The Sooners have fallen behind early in games (for example, a 20-4 deficit at home in the early going against Kansas) and had to fight their way back, but even more troubling is the manner in which they have relinquished leads late in games and not been able to close out their opponent.
Against Texas last weekend, Oklahoma held a 58-51 advantage more then midway through the second half. And then over a seven-minute span, at the most critical juncture of the game, the Sooners went scoreless while Texas scored 22 unanswered points to turn a seven-point deficit into a 15-point Longhorn advantage. Game over.
Three days later, in the regular-season home finale, OU came out with guns blazin’ and rolled to a 21-point halftime lead over 19th-ranked Baylor. Sixteen minutes into the second half, however, Baylor put on a furious charge and had outscored Oklahoma 43-21 to take a two-point lead. The Sooners did manage to regain their composure in the closing minutes and escape with a way-too-narrow two-point win.
Unbelievable late-game collapses and totally unacceptable for a Sooner team that is expected to make a deep run in the NCAA Tournament.
Shooting slumps are part of the game, but Oklahoma has too many weapons among its starting five for this to be a knockout punch such that we have witnessed against four of the last five Sooner opponents. Tired legs and tired bodies, on the other hand, can easily lead to the kind of physical and mental breakdowns that have hit Oklahoma late in games recently.
Not only is the shooting affected, but also the passing, setting screens to free-up scoring opportunities and the general movement of the players on the court to get in position to free-up a open look at the basket. All of these things have been absent down the stretch in the OU losses to Texas and almost all over again against Baylor earlier this week.
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During a 21-2 Baylor run in the second-half against the Sooners, Oklahoma failed to score on 10 of 11 possessions, including turning the ball over on six consecutive offensive possessions.
Senior forward Ryan Spangler insists that the Sooners aren’t wearing down with fatigue. I’m not so sure, though.
“We save our legs during the week and get our minds right for the game,” Spangler said to Oklahoma City Daily Oklahoman staff writer Ryan Aber after the Baylor game on Tuesday. “I felt good today, and I think my teammates felt good.”
The facts are, however, that three Oklahoma starters (Buddy Hield, Isaiah Cousins and Spangler) are averaging over 33 minutes of a 40-minute game. And a fourth, Jordan Woodard, averages 32 minutes a game. These four players produce 75 percent of the Sooners’ 81-point season scoring average, which is a big reason they play a lot of minutes. But it is also because the Oklahoma bench has not been very productive in the scoring column when the reserves are in the game giving the starters a rest.
The absence of a deep bench may not be as big a problem in the postseason because of all the TV timeouts that, when added to the team timeouts and other stoppages of play, provide players with ample moments to catch their breath in the course of a regulation game.
Nevertheless, it is a long season: over 30 games, usually two a week, over a season that runs five-to-six months when you take into account the preseason.
That is plenty of wear and tear on your body as well as you mental acuity. And now, when the stakes are the highest and one bad game can send you packing, Oklahoma appears to be worse for the wear.
Let’s hope that the start up of a new season – March Madness – will provide an extra boost of adrenalin that has been missing in the latter stages of the month of February.