Oklahoma basketball: Sooners bomb out at Baylor for 9th straight road loss

This was the last regular season road game for the Oklahoma basketball team. That is the good news.

The bad new is the Sooners suffered their ninth consecutive road loss in an 87-64 blowout on Senior Night at Baylor on Tuesday night.

I frankly didn’t think the Oklahoma men’s basketball program could look any worse than it did a little over a week ago in a 30-point shakedown by Big 12 champion Kansas. I was wrong. The Sooners – all of them collectively – were worse than awful against Baylor, if that is even possible. They were outright disgusting.

It was fairly obvious fairly early which team wanted this game more.

Oklahoma started off this game scoring the first five points less than one minute into the game. Over the next eight minutes, the Sooners managed to score just one point, and at one stage in the first half OU missed 18 of 20 shot attempts.

Baylor had some difficulty knocking down shots early, but once they found open lanes to the basket, which was early and often, the floodgates opened wide and Oklahoma found itself on the short end of a 19-point deficit, 31-12, at the four-minute mark of the first half.

The Sooners, the second highest scoring team in the nation coming into the game, didn’t reach 20 points in the first half and trailed 39-19 at the break. The game was virtually over at that point, and the Sooners confirmed that early in the second half.

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Trae Young had six points in the first half on two of nine shooting and missing the mark on all six of his three-point attempts, several badly. The Sooners shot just 20 percent as a team in the first 20 minutes and were doubled up in rebounding with Baylor pulling down 26 boards to 13 by OU.

The Sooner point guard was dead-on with his passes in the early going, finding open Sooners on numerous offensive possessions, but his teammates either mishandled the pass of couldn’t finish. This, plus his own shooting woes, appeared to frustrate Young as the opening half wore on and Oklahoma fell further and further behind. He threw the ball away on a couple of trips down the floor late in the first half and turned it over on two other occasions.

Oklahoma never got closer than 16 points in the second half. Young finished with 18 points, five assists and eight turnovers. Christian James was the only other Sooner is double digits with 14. Sad to report, no one else is worth mentioning.

Meanwhile, five Baylor players, including three starters, reached double figures in the scoring column. Senior Terry Maston led the Bears with 23 points. Four Baylor starters accounted for 65 of the Bears’ 87 points.

Baylor, 18-12 overall and 8-9 in the Big 12, probably secured a spot in the NCAA Tournament with the win over the Sooners. Oklahoma, on the other hand, must now defeat Iowa State in the Sooner home finale on Friday night or play themselves right out of the Big Dance.

The Sooners (17-12) have now lost 10 of their last 13 games and fall to 7-10 in the Big 12, leaving them in a three-way tie with Oklahoma State and Texas for seventh place in the conference standings. Not a glowing resume for a team that hopes to make the 68-team field for the NCAA Tournament.