Oklahoma basketball: Failure to close out tight games appears to be systemic Sooner problem
By Chip Rouse
The Oklahoma basketball men opened the Big 12 season with back-to-back games at home. An ideal situation for head coach Porter Moser’s Sooners to get off to a good start in what appears to be an even more competitive league than a year ago.
The Sooners came up short, albeit by a combined four points, in both games and now find themselves looking up at the rest of the conference with a 9-5 overall record and a daunting schedule of games dead ahead.
Four of OU’s five losses this season have been by a combined nine points. If this sounds strikingly similar to the woes of the Sooners’ football brethren, it’s because it is. Four of the football team’s seven loses this season, including four of their final five games, were decided by just three points.
Against No. 6 Texas on Saturday, the Sooners were tied 62-62 with 1:07 remaining but couldn’t find a way to close out the game, losing 70-69, despite leading for a good part of the second half.
And at home Tuesday night against Iowa State, Oklahoma, having impressively overcome a 25-7 first-half deficit, was deadlocked with the No, 25 Cyclones at 58 apiece with 45 seconds left to go in the game, but was unable to finish it off on its home court.
The Sooners trailed Iowa State by a single point with 7.5 seconds remaining and had an excellent opportunity to win the game, but an inbound pass from Bijan Cortes to Jalen Hill, who had two defenders around him, proved too hard to handle and the ball deflected off Hill’s hands and out of bounds. Opportunity lost, as well as the game.
Oklahoma heads out on the road this weekend to play at Texas Tech, and then the Sooners make their annual junket to Kansas’ Allen Field House, which had been a house of horrors for Oklahoma for nearly three decades.
Five Big 12 teams rank in the Associated Press Top 25 this week and, one other, Kansas State, with a surprising 13-1 record is on the brink of making it six.
The level of competition in the Big 12 this season is as difficult as it’s ever been, definitely more so than a year ago when Oklahoma ended league play with a 7-11 record. That fact is underscored by the ESPN Basketball Power Index. According to the ESPN BPI, the 10 most difficult remaining schedules belong to the 10 teams that reside in the Big 12
"“It’s crazy. There’s no time to hang you head,” Moser said to reporters on Tuesday ahead of the game with Texas. “You can be (upset), which we are. Learn from it, know the why and apply it. Let’s go get the next one."
“You’ve got to be one at a time,” the Sooner head coach said about the treacherous conference schedule. “You can’t get too high, and you can’t get too low. You’ve got to put it in the bank.”
OU’s next 17 games rank as the second-toughest schedule in the nation. The most difficult remaining schedule, according to the BPI, belongs to TCU, which is currently ranked No. 17 in the AP poll.
Oklahoma’s next five games are against 10-4 Texas Tech (Jan. 7), 13-1 and No. 3 Kansas (Jan. 10), 10-4 West Virginia at home (Jan. 14), 9-5 Oklahoma State (Jan. 18) and 10-4 and No. 19 Baylor at home (Jan. 21).