Oklahoma basketball: Sooners are unbeaten at home against TCU

Coming off a disappointing 12-point loss to a Kansas team that was without the Big 12’s top scorer, Oklahoma basketball has a third opportunity to claim its third conference win, welcoming TCU to the Lloyd Noble Center on Saturday.

The Sooners (11-5, 2-2) opened their Big 12 schedule with a couple of quick wins over Kansas State and Texas, but have lost their last two, both by double digits, at Iowa State and at home on Tuesday against Big 12 favorite and sixth-ranked Kansas.

TCU comes to Norman with a 12-4 record and 3-1 in the Big 12, but the Horned Frogs have only played two true road games and they split those games. They won by two at Kansas State but lost by 32 at West Virginia in their last outing.

Oklahoma is 23-4 all-time against TCU and, most importantly, is 12-0 in the games played in Norman.

TCU senior guard Desmond Bane is the Big 12’s second leading scorer, averaging 16.9 points a game. Like the Sooners, the Horned Frogs have three starters averaging in double digits. They are the second best three-point shooting team in the conference, and Bane is the most dangerous from deep, firing with 44-percent accuracy from three-point range.

Neither team is particularly dominant in the rebounding department, but the Horned Frogs have had more success on the offensive glass than the Sooners. That has been a problem for Oklahoma all season in allowing teams multiple scoring chances on the offense.

Austin Reaves is the Sooners’ second leading scorer, at 14.9 points a game, but he has been in a shooting slump, not reaching his average the last three games. He was just one of nine from the field with four points in Tuesday night’s loss to Kansas and has not made a three-point shot in 12 attempts in the last three games.

Senior forward Kristian Doolittle has carried the Sooners scoring load in recent games. His 16.6 average is fourth best in the conference, but he needs some scoring help from his supporting cast. Oklahoma shot just 31 percent against Kansas, and that was at home with a crowd of 10,000-plus present. That kind of anemic production is not going to get it done in the highly competitive Big 12.

If the game is close at the end, Oklahoma should have a huge advantage at the free-throw line. The Sooners continue to lead the Big 12, shooting 76 percent from the charity stripe. That’s 14 percent better than TCU, the worst free-throw shooting team in the conference.

I expect this to be a close game that could be decided by the team that has the last possession. The last six games between these two teams have been decided by an average of four points. OU won five of the six games.

Oklahoma wins by 4