Oklahoma basketball: Notable numbers from another Baylor Bear hug
By Chip Rouse
“We’ve got to get better,” said Oklahoma basketball coach Lon Kruger with a stiff upper lip as he faced reporters after his Sooners fifth consecutive loss on Monday night at Baylor.
That’s probably the understatement of the year. The Sooners dropped a 59-53 decision to Baylor, and although the final score was much closer than the last time these two teams met a couple of weeks ago in Norman, there weren’t really many signs that Oklahoma is getting better as the end of the regular season draws near.
In fact, a strong case can be made the Oklahoma basketball is getting worse. Call it the February curse — the Sooners are just 3-17 in their last 20 February games — or whatever you want. The truth is, the OU men are not nearly as good as their 11-1 season start deceived us to believe.
With five consecutive Big 12 losses, Kruger’s team is in the midst of a slow burn, regressing to the point that they have made the Big 12 coaches look prescient in their preseason projection that the Sooners would finish eighth in the conference standings.
In the course of a month, Oklahoma has gone from a projected No. 3 seed in Joe Lunardi’s “Bracketology” rankings to its current projection as a bubble team (“last four in”) and still falling.
Here are some of the more notable disappointing numbers from OU’s fifth consecutive Big 12 loss:
2 — Oklahoma scored just two points in the final five minutes of the game after taking a 51-50 lead.
2 — Free throws missed by Christian James on a flagrant foul late in the game with Oklahoma trailing by two points
14 — Points by Kristian Doolittle in the game, the Sooners’ high scorer.
21 – Both teams made 21 field goals in the game on 54 shot attempts. Ten of Baylor’s 21 FG, however, were three-pointers, to just three for Oklahoma.
17 — Baylor’s reserves outscored the OU reserves by 17 points (24-7), with 19 of the 24 points coming from the game’s high scorer, Devonte Bandoo of Baylor.
28 — Points scored in the paint by the Sooners, compared with 22 by Baylor
31-31 — The score at halftime of the OU-Baylor game. That is a far cry better than the 39-21 halftime score in the earlier meeting, won by Baylor in a 30-point blowout.
53.3 — Oklahoma’s free-throw percentage in the Baylor rematch (8 of 15).