Oklahoma basketball: Sooners winning with stingy defense, splendid shot selection
By Chip Rouse
From the moment Porter Moser arrived in Norman this past spring, he wasn’t even sure what players he would have, but he knew exactly what he wanted to do to succeed and build a winning culture.
Only four scholarship players carried over from the 2020-21 roster plus two incoming freshman recruits, so the first priority was abundantly clear: Find players to fill out the roster.
Moser did that, bringing in seven players through the transfer portal, and he managed to do so in relatively short time after taking over the Oklahoma men’s basketball program from veteran head coach Lon Kruger, who retired after 35 seasons in college coaching, the last 10 of which were at OU.
Flash forward to Dec. 20 and 10 games into the 2021-22 season for the new-look Sooners and we find Moser’s Oklahoma team at 9-2 with a pair of wins over teams ranked in the nation’s top 15.
https://twitter.com/OU_MBBall/status/1472684494972862467?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1472684494972862467%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fbleacherreport.com%2Foklahoma-sooners-basketball
The Sooners’ 70-50 win over UT Arlington on Sunday is a perfect example of what Moser is looking for from Oklahoma basketball this season. It’s not so amazing that the Sooners are winning basketball games, after all Moser has done that throughout his head-coaching career, most recently at Loyola of Chicago, which he took to an NCAA Final Four and last season to the Sweet 16.
The amazing thing about this Oklahoma team is that he is doing it with a 10-man rotation that features eight players who had never played together before this season. That speaks to the quality of the talent he was able to assemble in a little over a month’s time after taking the OU job, but also reflects the coaching and the ability and willingness of the players to buy in to his system and style of play.
The Sooners held UT Arlington to 34 percent shooting from the field for the game, and that figure was even lower in the opening 20 minutes, when the Mavericks hit just 6 of 24 shots for 25 percent. Those missed opportunities by UTA quickly turned into points at the offensive end by the Sooners, who threaded and shredded the Maverick defense with 59 percent shooting in the opening half and 51 percent for the game.
Previous OU coaches Kruger and Kelvin Sampson both stressed the value and importance of playing good defense, but the difference with Oklahoma’s defense performance in the past and this season boils down to consistency. Playing good defense is not something this team chooses to practice on a random basis, it’s something they take pride in doing for long stretches during games.
As an example, in eight of OU’s 11 games this season, the Sooners have held their opponent scoreless for a stretch of at least five minutes at some point in the game. In Sunday’s win, nearly eight minutes had elapsed in the opening half before UT Arlington recorded its first field goal, going 0 for 10 during that stretch.
While the Sooners are getting it done on the defensive end, they have also been highly efficient on the offensive end of the floor. Oklahoma ranks second in the Big 12 behind Kansas in field-goal percentage, shooting 50 percent through 11 games.
Moser likes his teams to create offense out of a solid defensive effort. “A huge part of our culture is just coming out really strong defensively,” said Tanner Groves, one of the seven transfers who Moser brought in and the team’s leading scorer, in the postgame interview session after the win over UT Arlington.
“Regardless of whether the offense is going for us or not, we’re still going to defend no matter what,” he said.
Sunday’s win was another example of a balanced effort both offensively and defensively, which is what this Oklahoma team is going to have to do to get the job done in the absence of any superstars.
When the whole is greater than the sum of the parts, which is what we are seeing from this group of Sooners, in this Oklahoma team it is the difference between winning and losing.
The Sooners probably aren’t going to win the Big 12 this season — the conference is far too strong and competitive — but they are going to a terrific start and aren’t going to be an easy out for any Big 12 foe.