Sooner Men BB Opens Big 12 Play against Iowa State at LNC @ 5 PM

[OUBeliever56A]

The Oklahoma Sooner Men's BB team with their 12-1 record host the Iowa State Cyclones 11-2 at Lloyd Noble Center in full day of basketball on Saturday in Norman. The OU-Iowa State s the second game of the day at LNC as the Sooner Women host Cincinnati at Noon in LNC. The Sooners ranked #11/#13 - NET #28, and the Cyclones RV31 and RV29 - NET #8 are both ranked highly this season and should be a strong opening game for each team.

The Big 12 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 Pete Sousa (PxP) and King McClure (analyst) on the call. Here is the Sooner staff writers article about the matchup.

https://soonersports.com/news/2024/1/5/ ... iowa-state

I must admit that I am a bit confused about the NET ranking for Iowa State. They have only beaten one highly regarded team, Iowa 90-65. Their two losses are to Virginia Tech (NET of #67) and Texas A&M (Net of #25). Their other 10 wins are against directional schools not even any mid-major teams. We will see how good Iowa State is on Saturday evening.

I think all of the 'would-be' Sooner fans would admit that they are a bit surprised by the athletic and deep Oklahoma Sooners this season. The Sooners 8-player rotation has proved to be resilient and very much able to handle most teams best effort and outplay them on the ball most of the time. The athleticism is impressive in the open court and on defense. The four bigs for OU, Godwin, Hugley IV, Moore and Soares offer teams a side variety of players to match up with and usually provide trouble for teams to handle them on defense. Godwin is relentless inside on the boards. Hugley IV plays a power game with a touch from long range. Moore plays above the rim and is very quick while Soares is just playing well anytime he is on the court. Uzan is running the team well and can contribute in many ways while McCollum is the scoring point/shooting guard who can hit from deep or go the rim effectively. Oweh seems to be the glue that keeps it all together for the Sooners. He can play defense, he can shoot, he can go to the bucket well and is playing smart and on defense well. Darthard is a classic defensive guard who can hit the shoot from outside when needed that just is there when needed. With those eight players on the court, the Sooners are versatile and very efficient on offense and defense.

The Sooners are scoring 82 points game and allowing just 63. Oklahoma pulls down 9 more rebounds than their opponents and shoot 11.5% better than than their opponents from the floor. The Sooner turnovers are down to 13 a game which is a big improvement. The Sooners also pick up 22.2 steals and assists a game to almost double the turnovers.

Iowa State is scoring a healthy 86 points a game and allowing only 59. A 27 point-differential is impressive. But again, who have they played? Their starting lineup is very similar size wise to the Sooners. They go 6'10", 6'8", 6'7", 6'4" and 6'1". OU matches up well with Godwin, Moore, Oweh, Uzan and McCollum. The Cyclones two best scorers are guards, Lipsey (15.5) and Gilbert (14.4). But OU has shown the ability to thwart good guard play with Uzan, Darthard, McCollum and help from Oweh this season. Only North Carolina with Davis hurt the Sooners from outside this year. Momcilovic, a 6'8" Forward, has a good all-around game for I-State who plays more outside than defense. King, a 6'7" Forward and R Jones, a 6'10" Forward, provide the bulk and play inside. All five Cyclones that start score 9.4 points a game at least. As a five-some the score 63.5 points per game. The five starters play about 135 minutes a game or 27 minutes a game for each of them.

The Cyclone subs score 26 points and about 15 rebounds a game with five players contributing. Two forwards, one 6'8" and one 6'9, score 9.4 and add 6.2 rebounds. Ward and Biliew can help inside. Three guards, led by C Jones, score 17.0 points a game. C Jones scores 9.9 and pulls down 3.3 rebounds in 24 minutes.

I think the game will boil down to who shoots the best and who handles the ball better than the other team. I think points off of turnovers could be a big key as well. I do think that the Sooners can handle the Cyclones tomorrow. I will be close, but I think the Sooners play well in the clutch. I believe that McCollum and Oweh will led the Sooners to a victory over Iowa State.

I hope the Sooners have a big crowd for the game tomorrow. Good luck to the Sooners in their first Big 12 game of the year!

Boomer Sooner!

[SwampSooner]

Sooners win 71-63 against a good ISU squad we don't normally beat. I followed the game on Gametracker. Sooners would take a 5 - 7 pt lead only to have ISU comeback and tie the game, then the Sooners would jump back out to a 4-6 pt lead. Game would continually repeat this cycle.

[OUBeliever56A]

First off, I have a couple, three observations about the game against Iowa State on Saturday.

• If you advertise tickets for $5 a seat, fans will show up pretty well for the OU Men's Basketball Team. (11,333 showed up yesterday.) If you advertise tickets for $10 a seat a few less will show up, but still a pretty good crowd will show. If you try to sell tickets for $25 a seat, die-hard fans will show up, but many will stay at home, especially with ESPN+ showing the game. If is a matter of this much or that much. If you want a crowd, $25+ is not the idea.

• It is possible that people are spoiled at OU when coming to the game. They seem to be used to showing up in the parking lot 15 minutes before the game time and getting into their seat for the introductions. Would it hurt many of the fans to show up at least 30 minutes prior to the tip-off to get into their seats? 45 minutes early?

• There was one smart Iowa State fan at the game. During the contrasting segment on the scoreboard showing OU fans (Fans cheer), then the camera is put on a Iowa State fans, in this case, while OU fans boo politely. One I-State fan used his head, when shown on camera he made the 'horns down sign', the boos quickly turned to cheers for him. Good job by him. BTW do not try to compete with OU Nana, she owns the crowd in LNC every time.

Now onto the game.

I thought OU did everything they needed to do to win the game against Iowa State. They played a consistent game throughout the game and played defense well as well as scoring consistently without a long drought of scoring in the game. The did this despite the foul trouble that Oweh got himself into, not entirely his fault, and therefore did not play a lot in the first half. The Sooners stepped up to play a solid 40 minutes with a very strong couple of minutes with about 4 minutes to play to win by 8 points, 71-63 over a good, solid Iowa State team.

The Oklahoma defense was the key to the victory I thought. They held I-State to 63 points which is 23 less than they have been averaging. Th Cyclones are big and physical inside and tough and gritty on the outside. They play a tough style of basketball. Yesterday the referees allowed them to do that most of the game, probably for most of the game. I did think defensive fouls were called very differently on the I-State end of the floor from the OU end of the floor. Despite that, OU adapted as both teams were called for 17 fouls with OU actually shooting 5 more free shots and making 5 more than I-State did. I think this was a big key in the game.

If you break the game down to five minute increments, OU won 5 of them by the score of 47-34. I-State won 3 of those segments 22-29. After 7 of those segments, the Score 55-54 in favor of the Sooners. The difference down the stretch was in favor of OU as they closed the final five minutes and outscored the Cyclones 16-9 down the stretch and simply won the game with confidence when they needed to. What a change a year can make. To me, the difference was a 5 possession exchange between OU and I-State with about 4 minutes in the game. Here is how that stretch of possessions went.

1. On a nice pick-and-roll play I think with McCollum, Godwin got free for a forceful dunk to give the Sooners the lead at 59-58.

2. On the following possession, Godwin pulled down a tough rebound inside with the Cyclones going to the bucket with strength.

3. The Sooners really reversed the ball around the perimeter of the Cyclone defense to find Darthard open for a 3 that he buried while hitting nothing but the bottom of the treads. OU was up by 4, at 62-58.

4.On a play on the left side of the rim, R Jones tied to get by Godwin for a left-handed layup above the rim. Godwin made a big play by getting a subtle block against Jones with Soares grabbing the rebound for the Sooners.

5. On a second pick-and-roll play, after a very good pass from McCollum again, Godwin in some traffic dunked the ball strongly to increase the Sooner lead to 6 points at 64-58.

While the game was not over yet, the game had turned and the Sooners were on top. In a game often cited for the highlight dunks, long three's and great athletic play, the difference was at that time, a long strong player named Sam Godwin, who just does his job with effort, with smarts and without fanfare. On the ensuing timeout by Iowa State after the five possession highlight film by Godwin, he was almost embarrassed by the Sooners acknowledging his play as he returned to the team huddle. That scholarship he recently earned and awarded by Oklahoma looks better every day. hats off to Mr. Godwin.

Oweh and Darthard finished Iowa State off at the free throw line as they made 7 of 8 charity points at the line. I will also mention the defense played by Darthard on Momcilovic down the stretch. Giving up 5 inches maybe, Darthard made the freshman Momcilovic work hard for every shot and not make but maybe one over Darthard. Darthard also scored 11 points in the game on only 4 shots, making 3 trey's and both of his free shots.

The 71-63 point win was well earned on defense. OU's defense held the five starters for Iowa State to 24 points under their average. Meanwhile, OU's starters scored 49 points of their average of 56 despite Oweh being in foul trouble in the first half and Moore being in foul trouble in the second half. In particular, the Sooner guards handled Lipsey, #3, for Iowa State well as it seemed like he was forcing the action the entire game trying to score his 15.5 points a game. He scored 4 before he fouled out just before the end of the game. The Sooner guards also held the #2 scorer for I-State to 8 of his 14 points a game on just 5 shots.

OU won despite being slightly outrebounded and despite giving up 18 points on the 11 OU turnovers (2nd best effort of the season by OU) and being outscored in the paint by 12 points and 15 second chance points due to 10 offensive rebounds given up by OU. To me that was what made Godwin's highlights so important. For much of the game, the I-State bigs played well, probably better than OU's bigs. Hugley IV was quiet, Moore did not shoot well and the second half fouls kept him a 5 rebounds for the game. But both Godwin and Soares played well in their 50+ minutes in the game by scoring 16 points and grabbing 15 rebounds with Soares pulling down 9 for the rebound leader of the game for both teams.

I also thought that McCollum and Uzan played two good solid games for OU. The point guard duo plays alot of the game with the ball in one of their hands (68 minutes against I-State) and they handle the ball extremely well. They scored 27 points, passed out 10 assists, against 4 turnovers.

In many ways the win over Iowa State was a Godwin, McCollum, Uzan, Darthard, Soares victory. When 5 of the 8 rotation players play well, the Sooners can be successful against most anyone.

Great game by the Sooners! Congratulations on a very good home win on Saturday.

The Sooner will travel to Ft. Worth for a game at TCU. That game will be followed with a trip to Lawrence to play Kansas on Saturday. Those two teams played to a tough 83-81 victory for Kansas in Lawrence. TCU led by two with a little over a minute to play. But Kansas prevailed. Kansas did have a very slight advantage at the free throw line but Kansas made two more shoots from the field on 5 less shots to win the game. TCU had a chance to time the game but the last shot was short for the Frogs.

It will be an interesting week for the Sooners on the road in the Big 12. Good luck to the Sooners on the road for the week.

Boomer Sooner!

[RussC]

A real goldmine of a post. Thanks!

[EMan]

I thought it was kind of an uneven game by OU for the first half or so. They didn't really seem to have any rhythm. Of course, not having Oweh for much of the first half due to his foul trouble played a big part of that. Plus, you have to give Iowa St. some credit as well. We''re into conference play and this type of game will be seen more often than not. The Big 12 is a real grinder of a league. No easy wins. I will also say this, if you had told me prior to the game that Oweh was not going to have a bucket in the entire game and would only corral 2 rebounds, I'd have said there's no way OU wins. But that's exactly what happened. All 8 pts for Oweh were from the charity stripe, he had one offensive and one defensive rebound, and OU still won. Ironically, he had the biggest +/- of any Sooner in the game, at a +13. Go figure. Obviously, he was a major concern for Iowa St. coming in and they game-planned around him. But as good teams do, others picked up the slack. McCollum, Uzan, Darthard and Godwin were all in double figures. It was a "team" win, and a good start to the conference season. Unfortunately, the heat is going to be turned up about 5 notches the next two games, going on the road to TCU and Kansas.

[RussC]

I thought it was kind of an uneven game by OU for the first half or so. They didn't really seem to have any rhythm. Of course, not having Oweh for much of the first half due to his foul trouble played a big part of that. Plus, you have to give Iowa St. some credit as well. We''re into conference play and this type of game will be seen more often than not. The Big 12 is a real grinder of a league. No easy wins. I will also say this, if you had told me prior to the game that Oweh was not going to have a bucket in the entire game and would only corral 2 rebounds, I'd have said there's no way OU wins. But that's exactly what happened. All 8 pts for Oweh were from the charity stripe, he had one offensive and one defensive rebound, and OU still won. Ironically, he had the biggest +/- of any Sooner in the game, at a +13. Go figure. Obviously, he was a major concern for Iowa St. coming in and they game-planned around him. But as good teams do, others picked up the slack. McCollum, Uzan, Darthard and Godwin were all in double figures. It was a "team" win, and a good start to the conference season. Unfortunately, the heat is going to be turned up about 5 notches the next two games, going on the road to TCU and Kansas.

I’m encouraged by the fact that OU did not play all that great and got the W. The radio analyst, Kevin Henry, pointed out numerous things during the course of the game that sounded to me like they would be very teachable moments for the team in film study. If I were more literate in basketball I could cite them here.