Buddy Hield Likes Sooners’ Chances in Postseason, but I Don’t Know
By Chip Rouse
Buddy Hield, the Sooners’ Mr. Optimist, feels confident about Oklahoma’s postseason chances.
That is exactly the attitude you want from your superstar player, arguably the best player in college basketball this season. And if it were just Buddy Hield, you’d feel equally confident about the Sooners’ prospects.
The problem is, there are four other players on the court with Buddy “Buckets,” and it is the collective contribution that worries me greatly about the late-season version of this Sooners’ team that seems to be limping into the postseason.
Ideally, teams want to be peaking and playing some of their best basketball heading into the postseason, when the level of competition gets better and the margin for surviving a bad game becomes much less.
Irrespective of the Buddy Factor, the Sooners have not played good basketball over the last month – and at the worst possible point of the season. They aren’t shooting as well as they were earlier in the conference season and aren’t protecting the ball, either, which is perhaps the most troubling of their problems as they get ready for the postseason.
“I have no doubt our team can win it all,” Hield said in his postgame comments for reporters after the Sooners’ 75-67 win over TCU in OU’s regular-season finale on Saturday.
The Oklahoma superstar would love another shot at Kansas in the Big 12 Tournament championship this week, but he was referring to how far he believes he and his teammates can go in the NCAA Tournament that tips off late next week.
“(I) feel like we like we’ve got a good coach, good players and we have all of the pieces to win it all,” Hield said.
The Sooners may have all the pieces for a long postseason run, but those pieces have been like an unfinished jigsaw puzzle missing some of the pieces over the last nine games spanning the last month of the regular season.
“I have no doubt our team can win it all.” —Buddy Hield, Big 12 Player of the Year
Oklahoma is averaging 81 points a game, but in reality the Sooners have not exceeded 80 points in a game going back 10 games, when they defeated TCU 95-72 on Feb. 7. So scoring is down, which is not particularly a go
od thing this time of year, and turnovers are up.
The Sooners are one of only two teams in the conference with a negative turnover ratio (meaning they commit more turnovers per game than their opponents), and the past two games have been a glaring example of this problem.
OU committed 17 turnovers in each of its last two regular-season games, and it nearly cost them in a narrow win over Baylor in the Sooners’ home finale.
Leading Baylor by 12 points late in the second half, Oklahoma committed turnovers on six consecutive possession, leading to 13 unanswered points, and the Bears took a brief one-point lead before the Sooners rebounded to pull out a close, two-point win.
Sad to say this, but Buddy Hield is one of biggest contributors to the Sooners’ recent turnover problems.
Another glaring problem that has surfaced late in the season is OU’s inability to close out games. A week ago against Texas, the Sooners let a seven-point lead evaporate in the wake of a 22-0 run by the Longhorns to turn what appeared to be a Sooner victory into a 13-point loss, all in the course of the final seven minutes of the game.
Just three days later, the Sooners almost blew a 26-point first-half lead, allowing Baylor to mount an enormous second-half comeback, and that was at home at Lloyd Noble Center.
It’s pretty simple, really, even though head coach Lon Kruger even acknowledged to an ESPN broadcast team after the Sooners’ win over TCU on Saturday that his team pretty much needed to improve in all facets of the game.
Oklahoma needs to shoot the ball better and get back to a more balanced offensive attack – one that does not just rely on Buddy “Buckets” and great three-point shooting to carry the day and propel the team to wins. Second, the Sooners must protect the ball better and stop giving up easy points off turnovers to its opponents.
The remainder of the Oklahoma basketball season depends on it.