With three consecutive wins to end the regular season, the men’s Oklahoma basketball team avoided an opening-round play-in game in the Big 12 Tournament.
The Sooners (17-14, 7-11) received the No. 7 seed and the final bye in the Big 12 postseason tournament that unfolds this week at the T-Mobile Center in Kansas City, Missouri. That’s the good news.
The bad news is, as the seven seed Oklahoma will face the tournament’s No. 2 seed, the Baylor Bears, who also happen to be the No. 3-ranked team in the country entering the postseason. OU and Baylor will tip off at 6 p.m. on Thursday.
Like Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s classic poem about the” little girl with the little curl,” when Oklahoma was good this season, it was very good, and when the Sooners were bad, they were very bad.”
On Jan. 8, Oklahoma was 12-3 overall and 2-1 in Big 12 play. The Sooners went 1-11 over the next 12 games, however, before closing out the regular season with three consecutive wins.
Baylor (26-5, 14-4) swept the two regular-season contests with the Sooners, winning 84-74 in Waco in early January and 65-51 in the rematch in Norman. The Oklahoma leads the overall series with the Bears 45-23, although the Sooners have lost the last eight times the two teams have faced each other.
The last time OU and Baylor met in the Big 12 Tournament was 2014 in Buddy Hield’s sophomore season with the No. 7 Bears prevailing 78-73 over No. 2-seeded Oklahoma in the quarterfinal round.
One of the immutable axioms in sports is that it is very difficult to beat a team three times in the same season. But this Baylor team isn’t just any other team. We’re talking about the reigning national champions. And although this team has been challenged by some significant injuries and isn’t quite as good as last year’s champions, it is still highly capable of winning it all again this season.
Thursday’s OU-Baylor game will tip off at 6 p.m. CT and be televised on ESPN. Jon Sciambi will do the play-by-play with Fran Fraschilla providing analysis and Kris Budden as the sideline reporter.
What fans need to know about OU-Baylor in the Big 12 Tournament quarterfinals
- Baylor is the Big 12 regular-season co-champion with Kansas. This is the third straight season the Bears have been the No. 2 seed in the Big 12 Tournament.
- Baylor is second in the Big 12 in scoring this season (76.8 points per game) and in three-point field-goal percentage (35.2) and leads the conference in average margin of victory (13.5).
- Adam Flagler and James Akinjo lead Baylor in scoring, averaging 13.8 and 13.3 points per game, respectively. The duo combined for 59 of Baylor’s 84 points in the Bears’ win over the Sooners in Waco this season.
- BU’s James Akinjo is a 2021-22 All-Big 12 First-Team selection and head coach Scott Drew is the Big 12 Coach of the Year.
- Baylor’s 26 wins this season and 11 Quadrant 1 wins are both program records.
- Oklahoma enters the Big 12 Tournament on a three-game win streak. Baylor has won its last five games.
- Tanner Groves leads the Sooners in scoring with a 12.4 average. In his last three games, however, Groves has averaged 15.0 points a game.
- OU’s second-leading scorer, Umoja Gibson (12.3) scored 29 and hit seven three-point shots in the Sooners’ 78-71 win over Kansas State on Saturday.
- The last time Oklahoma and Baylor played (Jan. 25 in Norman), the Sooners committed a season-high 25 turnovers. The Bears forced 17 OU turnovers in the first meeting earlier in January.
Prediction
Currently, Baylor is projected as a No. 1 seed in this season’s NCAA Tournament. Oklahoma played itself out of NCAA Tournament consideration with a late season collapse (losing seven out of eight games at one stretch) before closing the regular season with three consecutive wins to avoid a play-in game in the Big 12 Tournament.
The Sooners played a strong game on the road at K-State on Saturday, but Baylor is not Kansas State, and the Bears are one of the better defensive teams in the conference. Baylor wins by 10+, and OU can look forward to an NIT invite.