Oklahoma basketball: Three-pointers from Sooners’ season-opening win
By Chip Rouse
Men’s Oklahoma basketball opened its season with an offensive explosion and a 105-66 runaway home win over the University of Texas San Antonio.
The late Billy Tubbs would have loved this game, with the Sooners going over the century mark. Tubbs, the winningest coach in Oklahoma men’s basketball history, died last month at the age of 85.
Three times in Tubbs’ 14 seasons at Oklahoma the Sooners averaged at least100 points per game.
It was an impressive performance for a team playing its first game of the season. The Sooner men had to wait a week longer than most everyone else in college basketball to get their new season underway. OU and UTSA were originally scheduled to tip off the season eight days earlier. That game was postponed because of COVID issues in the Oklahoma program.
“It’s a COVID year, and we’ll line up and do what we need to do.” — Sooner head coach Lon Kruger
Here are the three key things to takeaway from this resounding OU win:
Brady Manek is back and better than ever
The four-year Oklahoma starter scored a game-high 29 points and eight of his nine field goals were three-pointers. He made 8 of 11 three-point shots, a career high. Manek, who averaged 14.4 points a game and was the Sooners’ third leading scorer a year ago, scored as many as 29 points just three times last season.
The 6-foot, 9-inch forward from nearby Harrah, Oklahoma, also is back to the Larry Bird look, sporting the same long hair and mustache look he had when he started his OU career as freshman in 2017.
Manek’s stat line for the game read 9 for 15 shooting (60 percent) for 29 points, a career-high eight three-pointers, five rebounds and two blocked shots. A complete night’s work for the player the Sooners are going to count on a lot to lead the team in the 2020-21 season.
Sooners looked in mid-season form offensively
Head coach Lon Kruger was concerned coming into Thursday night’s season opener about how the Sooners would perform and about their conditioning, missing a good part of the past week when the program was forced to pause because of COVID concerns.
The Sooner head man got his answer early in the game as OU scored the first six points and 10 minutes into the game had built a 31-12 lead. The Sooners stretched that lead to 23 points and a 51-28 margin at the break, and didn’t let up in the second half.
Oklahoma shot 50 percent for the game, scoring 81 of its 105 points either in the paint (30) or behind the three-point arc.
Another impressive sign this early in the season was the bench contribution. OU reserves scored 45 points, getting 22 points from sophomore De’Vion Harmon and 12 from true freshman Trey Phipps.
The Sooners played the game with only nine scholarship players available.
OU needed this game as a tune up ahead of Sunday’s game with TCU
At one point late last week, it appeared that the Sooners might have to begin their season against a Big 12 foe. OU is scheduled to play at TCU on Sunday. Conference games are important, and the last thing you would want is to play a conference opponent as you’re first game competition of the season. And to make matters worse, TCU has already played four games.
The fact that the Sooners played so well in their opener is a positive sign in a less than ideal situation. It may also be telling that three of TCU’s four wins are by six points or less.
It is highly unusual to play two conference games in December, but the Big 12 has chosen to do that this season and leave the week before the conference tournament in March open should it be necessary for makeup games because of COVID-related postponements during the season.
“Having a conference game early is different,” Kruger said in his postgame press conference after the win over UTSA., “but again it’s a COVID year and we’ll line up and do what we have to do.”
About getting the first game under their belt, the Oklahoma head coach said: “To play against other people is really good. Now, of course, the conference opener takes on an even greater challenge. It was good to get a ballgame in and check our conditioning a little bit.”