Oklahoma basketball: OU men complete three-game sweep in foreign exhibition tour
By Chip Rouse
All of the college sports new right now is about the start of the college football season, but believe it or not, the men’s Oklahoma basketball team has also been in action recently and making good headlines of its own.
The Sooner men just competed a foreign exhibition tour in Spain and France and came away with three impressive victories in as many games, led by several new faces.
The new-look Oklahoma men’s team, which includes eight new players that weren’t with the Sooners last season, began its 10-day foreign tour in Barcelona, Spain, with a 97-41 victory on Aug. 4 over Mataro Select.
A pair of OU newcomers, Joe Bamisile and Grant Sherfield led the way for the Sooners, scoring 22 and 14 points, respectively. Bamisile, who transferred to Oklahoma from George Washington, was 10 of 13 from the field, including two of three on three-balls. In addition to his 14 points, Sherfield, a Nevada transfer guard, recorded six assists.
Two days after the win over Mataro, the Sooners matched up against another select European team, Maresme Select, in Barcelona. OU scored early and often and ran away with a 103-71 win.
Sherfield and Basimile again led OU, except this time in reverse order. Sherfield tallied a team-high 19 points, including five three-pointers. Bamisile contributed 14 points along with a dozen rebounds. Two other Sooner newcomers, Luke Northweather and Milos Uzan, added 16 and 9 points, respectively. Uzan also contributed nine assists to the Sooner victory.
Oklahoma opened up a 56-33 advantage at halftime and stretched the margin to 30 points in the third quarter.
Head coach Porter Moser’s Sooner crew completed their European exhibition tour this past Tuesday in France with a 91-53 win over the Paris All-Stars.
The two teams battled back and forth through the first quarter before Oklahoma went on a seven-point run in the second quarter to open up a 36-15 margin. The Sooners never looked back from there.
Basimile and sophomore guard C.J. Noland led the way in Paris with 16 points apiece and fellow sophomore Bijan Cortes added 13 more. Noland and Cortes both buried three three-pointers.
In the three wins, Oklahoma averaged 97 points a game while holding their three opponents to 55 points. Bamisile led the team in scoring on the tour, averaging 17.3 points a game.
With so many new faces on the roster, OU’s foreign tour helped the team become more familiar with one another and build chemistry and comfort playing together on the court under game conditions. This will give the team an important step up when they come together again for official team practices in the fall