Oklahoma basketball: Sooners-Cowboys go at it in Bedlam III in Big 12 Tournament
By Chip Rouse
The case for Oklahoma State to win the game
Two wins over Kansas along with wins over Texas Tech and West Virginia. You don’t have to say much more than that to sum up Oklahoma State’s ability to win this game. They also have beaten the Sooners once this season (by two points at home in overtime), but they also were hammered by 20 points by OU in the game in Norman.
The Cowboys are 11-1 all-time in the opening round of the Big 12 Tournament and 3-1 against Oklahoma in Big 12 edition of the conference tournament. OSU is 2-0 when taking on the No. 9 seed in the tournament.
No Oklahoma State player is in the top 10 in the conference in scoring, but the Cowboys have three starters who average in double figures and three others who average at least eight points a game. Senior Jeffrey Carroll leads OSU in scoring averaging 15.1. Kendall Smith is next, scoring at a 12.1 clip per game.
Carroll had 23 points in the Cowboys’ win over the Sooners in Stillwater in January. That was the same game in which Trae Young scored 48 for Oklahoma.
Oklahoma State shoots 44 percent from the field, seventh best in the Big 12, but ranks second in the conference in offensive rebounds, which leads to a lot of second-chance points. This will set up an interesting battle, because OU leads the Big 12 in defensive rebounding.
Perhaps the biggest factor in Oklahoma State’s favor for Bedlam III is the fact that the Cowboys are playing very well of late and have that momentum going for them, while the Sooners have played very poorly in their last dozen games and haven’t shown much sign of getting back to the way they played in the first half of the season.