Oklahoma basketball: Takeaways from a loss Sooners should feel good about

The men’s Oklahoma basketball team faced its most difficult challenge of the season Tuesday night and performed admirably although in a losing performance.

The Sooners fell to No. 1-ranked Baylor on the defending national champions’ home floor. 84-74.

It was Oklahoma’s third loss of the season to go with 11 wins and the Sooners first loss in Big 12 play.

The top-ranked Bears took a nine-point lead, 45-36, to the locker room at halftime and stretched the advantage to 14 points early in the second half, but the character of this Sooner team showed itself as the more-talented Baylor group threatened to blow the game wide open with less than two minutes gone in the second half.

Over the next two minutes, Oklahoma showed its resilience and refusal to give up, engineering a 9-0 run to pull within five points,at 50-45, and get back in the game.

Although the Bears were never in real danger of losing the game, OU made it interesting again at the end, closing to within five points, 77-72, with just over two minutes remaining, but the Bears were able to hold on with a couple of strong defensive plays and seven for eight from the free-throw line to close out the game.

Three Sooner starters, Tanner Groves (13), Umoja Gibson (12) and Jalen Hill (12), scored in double figures, and Jordan Goldwire added nine points. OU continues to wield a hot hand on the offensive end. The Sooners shot 56 percent from the field for the game. Baylor also shot well, however, led by a career high-matching 27 points by Arizona Transfer James Akinjo and 22 from Adam Flagler

Despite the 10-point loss, head coach Porter Moser and the Sooners generally speaking should feel good about this game, especially the way they continued to fight to the very end. In the long run, that’s going to pay off in their favor more times than not.

Here are three big takeaways from what has to be considered a good loss:

Sooners fought and clawed to the very end, despite talent disparity

The expectation of the Sooners winning this game were very low, but they refused to be intimidated and fought hard to the very end. The 10-point winning margin by Baylor was the result of OU having to foul to lengthen the game. Baylor made seven of eight free-throws over the final minute and outscored the Sooner 7-2 to stretch a five-point advantage to 10 at the final buzzer.

It will be interesting to see how many other Big 12 teams play Baylor that close in Waco.

Second-chance points single-handedly hurt Oklahoma’s chances

The Sooners were seriously outrebounded in this game, 34-16. Baylor pulled down 12 offensive boards to just three by OU. That led to 19 second-chance points by the Bears, which almost single-handedly killed Oklahoma’s chances of winning the game.  The Sooners had no second-chance points in the game.

OU continues to shoot well, but so did Baylor

Oklahoma shot 55.8 percent for the game (29 of 52) and 68.2 percent in the first half (15 out of 22). This is the ninth time in 14 games the Sooners have shot better than 50 percent in a game. The problem was Baylor also shot the ball well (56.4 percent for the game). It is only the second time this season, however, that an OU opponent has shot better than 50 percent.

It doesn’t get any easier for the Sooners. They return home and will host 11th-ranked Iowa State at 5 p.m. Saturday.