OU Men's Basketball hosts Wisc-Green Bay on Sat @ 8 PM in LNC !

[OUBeliever56A]

First thing that is important for the Oklahoma Men's Basketball team is to hide all schedules for the team in LNC and the support facilities. Do not let the OU players think about the NEXT game next Wednesday at 8 PM. The Sooners just need to focus on Wis-Green Bay for about 48 more hours and they will be 10-0 as thy board their plane to Charlotte N.C. next week. Just 48 more hours to focus on W-GB is all they need. The Sooners will host Wisconsin-Green Bay in a late game on Saturday at 8 PM in LNC. Wis-Green Bay is 5-6 on the season. The only Power-5 conference opponent they have had is Iowa State. I-State defeated W-GB 85-44.

W-GB has one primary scorer, Reynolds, a 6'3" Guard, who scores 18.5 Pts/G. W-GB has one good rebounder, Jones, a 6'7" Forward, who pulls down 7.7 Reb/G. W-GB has started 8 different players in their last 4 games which means the lineup is fluid. Reynolds who also passes out 54 assists while scoring 18 a game looks to be pretty good. But the Oklahoma guards should corral him early and often. If Reynolds does not score, the Phoenix of W-GB struggles to score. In fact they only score 63.64 Pts/G while they give up 66.36 Pts/G. that does not add up to a great deal of wins on a consistent basis. The Phoenix averages 8 shots less than OU does per game and they shoot 44.7% to OU's 50.9% shooting. OU averages 6 rebounds per game also. W-GB does not have anyone that plays that is over 6'8".

Oklahoma should win the game fairly easy as long as they are focused on the Saturday night game. The Sooners are being consistently led by Oweh and McCollum so far this season. Those two are averaging 30.1 points per game and seem to be able to get 'their' shots whenever needed. The improvement in Oweh's overall game is impressive. I would not have guessed he would be playing this well after his freshman season. He was a good prospect, but he is now a very good player in all phases of the game. McCollum was recently compared to Allen Iverson by someone. I am glad he does not have that 'Iverson attitude' but McCollum has much of the Iverson game. He is fun to watch play the game. The trio of Godwin, Hugley IV and Soares are pulling down 16.8 boards a game. In fact the supporting cast of those three, Uzan, Moore and Darthard combine to score 51.0 Pts/G and add an awful lot of defense. At times, every Sooner in the 8 player rotation has played a key role in a game. I am personally waiting for Moore and Darthard to have a 'bigger' game as the others have had. Maybe we get to see that against W-GB so that that next team we play has to spend some time to work on their games also.

I would also like to see Northweather get some cleanup work on Saturday night as the Sooners may need him for some solid minutes soon and in the Big 12 play. Northweather is our 4th big man and he needs to be ready. Seeing a little more of Cayden Green would be nice also. He is very long and can shoot from long range it looks like.

Good luck to the focused Sooners on Saturday night!

Boomer Sooner!

[OUBeliever56A]

The Oklahoma Sooners (9-0) host Wisconsin Green Bay (4-5) on Saturday night in a 8 PM tip-off in Lloyd Noble Center.

The non-conference contest will air on the Sooner Sports Radio Network (KRXO 107.7 FM The Franchise in Oklahoma City; KTBZ 1430 AM in Tulsa; Varsity Radio App) with Toby Rowland and Kevin Henry announcing and be broadcast by ESPN+ with Chad McKee (PxP) and Bryndon Manzer (analyst) on the call.

Here is the Sooner staff writers article about the game.

https://soonersports.com/news/2023/12/1 ... n-saturday

Good luck to the Men's BB Team on Saturday night.

Boomer Sooner!

[OU Guy]

It’s Porter time. OU 81-47 final, now 10-0.

“No matter what happens on offense… defense has to be there every possession.”

Otega Oweh 7 steals, being told the most for an OU player since 1995.

This team has a massive game coming up but wow has Porter turned the tide in year 3.

[OUBeliever56A]

Here is the Sooner staff writers article about the Oklahoma Men's Basketball Team's defeat of Wisconsin-Green Bay 81-47.

https://soonersports.com/news/2023/12/1 ... -green-bay

As you can see the headline is "wire-to-wire dominant victory". While I was not there and I 'watched the game' on TV while at a holiday event, I don't think the phrase dominant applies. although it was a good victory against a team that did not have the players to think seriously about defeating the Sooners.

If you look at the game in 5 minute segments, the Sooners won the game handily by playing well in 15 minutes of play. In the final 5 minutes of the 1st half, the Sooners outscored the Phoenix of W-Green Bay, 15-0 to close to their 36-20 lead at halftime. In the second half, in the 2nd and 3rd five minutes of play, the Sooners outscored W-Green Bay 30-8 on their way to the 81-47 win. If you use some quick math, you discover that the Sooners outscored their opponent 45-8 in those very good 15 minutes. Meanwhile in the other 25 minutes of the game, the Sooners actually 'lost" to W-Green Bay 36-39. I would imagine that the W-Green Bay coach will talk about those 25 minutes of play to encourage his team while Coach Moser will discuss those 25 minutes with the Sooners and talk about focus, effort and things that a coach talks about when his team does not play that well. Then Coach Moser will talk about the good 15 minutes and give the team a high-five.

There were 7,012 fans at the game last night which is decent for a holiday game. the game served as a decent warm-up for the next one. More on that in just a minute.

The Sooners distributed the ball very well last night as they had 18 assists on 28 buckets. 7 Sooners scored between 13 and 8 points with no Sooner taking more than 9 shots in the game. The Sooners shot 51.9% from the field and that was with a 5 for 17 night (29.4%) from the 3-point area.

Otega Oweh picked up 7 steals in the game and he entered some record book with that effort. It was the most steals by a Sooner player since December 1999. He also had one highlight reverse dunk during the game. I thought Jalen Moore played strong around the rim as I saw at least two big dunkes by him, one on an offensive rebound. Rivaldo Soares led the Sooners with 13 points (5 Rebs) while OWeh added 12 and John Hugley IV provided 11 points. Le'Tre Darthard (3 - Three's) Sam Godwin (4 off reb) and Javian McCollum (8 assists) added 9 points each. Moore added 8 points with 8 rebounds. Milos Uzan (4 assists and 3 steals) and Kaden Cooper added 4 points with Maks Klanjscek and Yaya Keita finishes with 1 point each.

The Sooners outscored the Phoenix 44 to 14 in the paint, picked up 20 extra points from fast breaks and their bench outscored the Phoenix bench by 24.

The victory by the Sooners was a solid victory for the Sooners that was probably highlighted by their defense and ability to play in transition and in the paint.

Okay, now the next game. The Sooner Men will Travel to Charlotte, N.C. to play in the Jumpman Invitational against North Carolina. The Tarheels (9th ranked) lost yesterday afternoon to Kentucky 87-83. Kentucky was ranked 14th. I watched part of the game yesterday and thought the North Carolina was not playing that well in the first half. I was a bit surprised that they made a close game of it against Kentucky by the end of the game when I checked the score this morning. The Sooners will take their 10-0 record into Carolina who is now 7-3 in what could be the biggest game in a while for OU. The Sooners are off to their best start since the 2015-2016 season where the Sooners ran their unbeaten streak to open the season to 12-0. That team was a Final 4 Team led by Buddy Hield.

If the Sooners can get by a road game on a not-very neutral court in Charlotte, N.C. against North Carolina, the Sooners will best that 12-0 record of the Buddy Hield team as the Sooners should enter the Big 12 season with a 13-0 record. IF, the Sooners can rise to the challenge of North Carolina in Charlotte on Wednesday night. The game will be on ESPN at 8 PM for the country to watch.

Boomer Sooners!