Oklahoma basketball: Three takeaways from OU’s last prep before Big 12 action

Men’s Oklahoma basketball matched the OU women, recording its 10th win of the season with a 72-48 home win over Alcorn State to close out the 2021 portion of the schedule.

The Sooners trailed 2-0 in the opening minute of the contest, but that lasted exactly nine seconds and OU never trailed the rest of the way.

Oklahoma led 34-15 at the halftime break, holding road-weary Alcorn State to just 22-percent shooting in the opening 20 minutes. OU continued the offensive attack in the second half, opening up with an 18-8 run to stretch the lead, which exceeded 20-plus points for most of the second stanza. The Sooners largest margin was 33 points with just under six minutes to go in the game.

Senior shooting guard Umoja Gibson led all scorers with a season-high 17 points, including five three-pointers, also a season high. Jordan Goldwire added 11 points and Tanner Groves 10.

The Sooners shot a blistering 60 percent for the game (27 of 45) and 71 percent in the second half when they put the game well out of reach.

This concludes the major portion of the nonconference schedule (a Big 12/SEC Challenge game at Auburn is scheduled Jan. 29). The Sooners have already beaten two teams out of the SEC this season (Florida and Arkansas).

This was Alcorn State’s eleventh consecutive road game to start the season. And that road schedule has to be the toughest in the country with previous stops at Gonzaga, Houston and most recently at No. 1 Baylor.

Oklahoma is off until Jan. 1, when the Sooners begin Big 12 play at home against Kansas State.

Sooners continue to shoot the ball with high efficiency

If Oklahoma has one Achilles heel on offense this season, it is the tendency to turn down shots closer in, where the Sooners are heavily efficient, in favor of three-point tries. OU was 0 for 7 in the early going from three against Alcorn State before it drained the first of nine for the game. The Sooners shot 60 percent from the floor for the game, but were an incredible 18 of 24 (75 percent) for the game from inside the three-point line.

Oklahoma currently ranks fifth in the nation in field-goal percentage with a 51 percent average.

Turnovers are a growing problem that could spell trouble going forward

Pure and simple, the Sooners are turning the ball over far too often. OU ranks 213th in the country in that category and last in the Big 12, averaging over 14 ball-handling miscues per game. This is a big area of concern for Oklahoma as it gets ready to take on the super-tough Big 12 schedule.

Defense will determine this team’s success in highly competitive Big 12

While Oklahoma has been highly efficient on the offensive end, it has been solid defensive play that has created much of that offensive productivity. Alcorn State put up 13 more shots than the Sooners, yet OU made nine more field goals on fewer attempts. The Sooner defense held the Braves to 30-percent shooting for the game and also came away with eight steals and five blocked shots.

Head coach Porter Moser knows the Sooners are going to face an incredibly tough gauntlet of teams in the Big 12’s balanced round-robin schedule, but he also knows if his team is able to play the type of defense they demonstrated through the nonconference schedule, they will be in most games with a chance to pull out a win

The Sooners definitely appear to be playing a better brand of basketball so far this season than the projection by the league coaches in the Big 12 Preseason Poll that OU was the seventh-best team in the conference heading into the 2021-22 season.

“I’m never satisfied,” Moser said in his postgame comments following the win over Alcon State. “Did a lot of people believe we’d be where we are today? No. Now the next phase is conference play, and we have to step it up another level,” he said.

“This is the best basketball league in the country, bar none, this year.”