Oklahoma basketball: Sooners indicative of what the Big 12 is about this season
By Chip Rouse
For men’s Oklahoma basketball, the difference between being 2-3 and 5-0 in the Big 12 is a matter of eight points.
Five of the Sooners six losses this season have been by four points or less. All five of their Big 12 contests so far have been decided by five or fewer points. They’ve been on the winning side of two of them, including a one-point victory over West Virginia.
That’s the story in the Big 12 this season, with eight of the conference’s 10 teams ranked in the top 50 of the NET rankings and five ranked in the top 25.
Close games have become the norm in the Big 12 this season, and the best teams are going to find ways to win those games.
Take a look at Kansas, which sits atop the Big 12 and No. 2 in the country. In three conference home games at a place where the Jayhawks rarely ever lose, their wins have been by two points over Oklahoma State, four points over the Sooners (although KU was down by 10 with five minutes to go) and one over Iowa State this weekend.
The Sooners (11-6, 2-3) have had difficulty closing out games in which they have led late in the game. They were in a good position to win in their three Big 12 losses but couldn’t get the job done. Saturday’s win over West Virginia could have easily gone the other way, even though Oklahoma led by as many as nine points with 13:42 remaining in the second half and still held a seven-point lead with under eight minutes to go.
That’s when things started to break down for Oklahoma defensively. The Mountaineers made field goals, two of them on three-balls from deep, in four of their next five trips down the floor and were within one at 66-65 with four and a half minutes to go. From there to the end, it was a dogfight. Had West Virginia not missed four free throws in the final 1:43 of the game and two in a row with the score knotted at 70-all, this game could have ended much differently.
While West Virginia was going two of six at the free-throw stripe in clutch time, the Sooners, who lead the Big 12 in free-throw percentage, made six of seven, and that was the difference in the game.
Scoring droughts have been an issue for this Oklahoma team at times this season, despite leading the Big 12 in field goal percentage (49.4) and ranking 13th nationally. The Sooners went cold from the field over the final 6:14 of the game. Their final 11 points all came from the free-throw line.
After the game, OU head coach Porter Moser was effusive about the play of the Sooners two guards, Grant Sherfield and Milos Uzan. Not only did the backcourt duo contribute a combined 33 points (a game-high 22 by Sherfield and 11 by the true freshman Uzan), but they grabbed 13 rebounds between them.
Sherfield was particularly sharp in his field-goal attempts, going just 5 of 15 from the floor, but he went 9 of 11 from the free-throw line, which boosted his scoring total over the 20-point level for the eighth time in his 17 games this season.
Moser had challenged his guards to be more aggressive in boxing out and helping out in rebounding, which has not been the Sooners’ strong suit this season, and on Saturday that effort helped Oklahoma win the battle of the boards (29-19) over a very good West Virginia rebounding team.
A concern going forward is the big minutes both Sherfield and Uzan are logging in games. On Saturday, Sherfield, the Sooners’ leading scorer, was on the court for all but five minutes and Uzan played over 38 minutes. As the season wears on, this could become a problem if Moser doesn’t find a way to sub for them more often and get them more rest during games and keep them fresher for the end of games.
The Sooners have a chance to get back to .500 in Big 12 play this coming week when they travel to Stillwater for round one of 2023 Bedlam basketball against 1-4 Oklahoma State.