Buddy Hield: What More Can You Say About This Sooner Superstar?
By Chip Rouse
Buddy Hield is best known as a marksman, a deadeye shooter with a extremely high proficiency for putting the rock, as college basketball analyst Dick Vitale likes to call it, in the basket.
That may have been the game of the Oklahoma All-American in past years, but his game this season is much more. Hield has increased his scoring average in each of his four seasons at Oklahoma, and his shooting percentage has catapulted from 38 percent his freshman season to over 50 percent this season.
His shooting stats through 31 Sooner games this season are a Big 12-best 25.6 points per game. He averages close to four three-pointers per game and shoots the three-ball with 47-percent accuracy, fourth best in the country. And Hield is not the guy you want to foul late in games – or anytime, for that matter. He shoots 90 percent from the free-throw line.
His value to Oklahoma basketball in 2015-16 is much more, however, than the volume of points he puts on the board. He is the heart and soul of the Sooner basketball team, and in addition to his scoring ability, the OU senior averages over five rebounds per game and 2.1 assists.
Against Iowa State, Hield scored over half of Oklahoma’s 79 points, but on top of that, he pulled down seven rebounds, blocked two shots and forced two charging calls against Iowa State and at critical points in the game.
The OU star and two-time Big 12 Player of the Year (only the second player to be so named in the 20-year history of the Big 12) made 14 of 19 field goals in the Sooners’ Big 12 Tournament quarterfinal victory over longtime nemesis Iowa State.
The significance of that stat is that it represented a career high for Hield and also ties the Big 12 Tournament record for most field goals in a single game (Mike Singletary of Texas Tech also had 14 field goals in the 2009 conference tournament).
The thing that makes Buddy Hield so special is that he not only is an outstanding college basketball player, but he is also a terrific young man who exudes a lot of confidence and doesn’t seem to have a negative bone in his body.
After the Iowa State game in the Thursday nightcap of the Big 12 Tournament, ESPN sideline reporter Holly Rowe rounded up Iowa State’s Georges Niang and Hield, two of the best players in the Big 12 this season, for a combination interview.
Hield was asked what it was like to go up against the Cyclones’ star, Niang:
“I wish I was taller so I could defend him better,” Hield quipped.
“It was fun competing against him,” he said. “He’s such a good competitor. He’s a tough matchup to guard. He uses his body so well. Going against guys like Niang is fun.”