Sooners Host Texas Tech in Women's Basketball Action: Sat @ 2 PM

[OUBeliever56A]

The Oklahoma Sooners Women's Basketball team will host the Texas Tech Red Raiders on Saturday at 2 PM in Lloyd Noble Center. The Sooners are 3-1 in Big 12 play while being 9-6 overall for the season. Texas Tech is 2-2 in conference play and has a 13-4 overall record.

Texas Tech opened the season with 11 straight wins. Since then the Red Raiders are 2-3 in their last five games. Tech has defeated Houston and Kansas while losing to Texas and Oklahoma State. OU has won over UCF, BYU and Cincy while losing their last game to K-State.

The game is broadcast on ESPN+ with Chad McKee and Latricia Trammell on the call.

Here is the Sooner staff writers article about Saturday's game.

https://soonersports.com/news/2024/1/12 ... n-saturday

From the article above, the Sooners will wear their alternate uniform (anthracite) in the game. The Sooners are 8-0 wearing the anthracite uniforms and 2-0 wearing the pink uniforms since 2021 season. I guess that is a little bit of good luck being sent Oklahoma's way for tomorrow's game.

Tech is similar to Oklahoma in that they play 11 players each game regularly. They are lead by two scorers with 15 points a game. Maupin (15.4 PPG/4.6 Reb) is a 5'10" guard while Shavers (15.3 PPG/ 5.6 Reb) is the 5'8" guards. Between the two of them that play 57+ minutes a game. Maupin leads the Red Raiders in assists with 65. Both Maupin and Shavers have 27 steals as well. The third starting guard is 5'7" Chevalier (3.8 PPG/1.8 Reb) with 24 assists ann 21 steals. the other two starters are G/F types of players according to the roster. Freelon is 6'1" (8.6 PPG/5.7 Reb) while Merritt is 6'3" (7.1 PPG/5.2 Reb). Both of them have 20+ steals. The last three starters play about 21-22 minutes a game. Merritt is a transfer from Florida.

The other six players that play most every game consist of 3 guards and 3 players over 6'0". The three bigs are Arike (6'2"), Wynn (6'1") and Lewis (6'4"). They play 21, 18 and 7 minutes a game and score 12 points and grab 5 rebounds combined. The three guards, Johnson (5'10"), Ukkonen (5'9") and McKinney (5'9") play 35 minutes and score 10 points and grab 4 rebounds combined. Wynn is a transfer from Colorado.

The Sooners swept Texas Tech last year 2-0. I do not think their are any match-up issues for the Sooners playing against Texas Tech. Maupin, Shavers, Wynn and Ukkonen will shoot a three regularly. Texas scores 71 points a game and gives up 59 points. They pull down 36 rebounds with 36% of them being on the offensive boards. The Sooners will need to be mindful of the defensive rebounds. Tech shoots 41.9% overall with 47% inside the arc, 32.6% from beyond the arc and 41.9% overall. They put up 58 shots a game. They go to the free throw line 20.5 times a game and makes 75.9% of them. The Sooners need to avoid foolish fouls against Tech. Tech turns the ball over 16.5 times a game and picks up 25.4 assists and steals a game with almost 9 steals a game.

Oklahoma just needs to play well against Texas Tech to pick up a win without any scoring droughts and play good defense with a rebounding focus. The Sooners shoot better than Tech with 49.3% from inside the arc, 28.8% from beyond the arc for 41.4% overall. But OU does put up 69 shots a game for 9 extra shots on average. Oklahoma shoots 70.7% from the charity stripe. That should give OU an 8 point advantage. OU rebounds well with 46.3 a game. with 33.1% of them on the offensive end. OU has cut their turnovers but still have an average of 18.2 per game along with 29.3 assists/steals per game. OU's points made and given up are about 8 points higher reflecting the faster pace of play for OU.

The Sooners need to find 2 or 3 players that are hot tomorrow and feed the ball to them as needed. If the Sooners can get double-digit points from 3 or 4 players and rebound well and take care of the ball they should be successful. the playing rotation has been set for the Sooners for a while. They start, Vann, Williams, Verhulst, Keys and Tot. Culliton and Joens are first of the bench for Vann and usually Williams. Vann will some back in for Verhulst and Tot goes to the bench for Scott. At some point it is Scott, the twin towers (Johnson and Landry) with Kennedy with one starter in the game. That last five needs to have a good scorer on the floor with them, IMO.

If the Sooners could get Williams going well early in the game it would be a very good thing instead of just in the 4th quarter as of late. If Keys, Joens or Verhulst holds a hot hand from long distance it is a big help as well.

I think OU should be have good odds of winning this game at home on Saturday. I will say that the Sooners do need the win also. It is important to win all these games that they probably should win. Good luck to the Sooners wearing those anthracite uniforms tomorrow.

Boomer Sooner!

[OUBeliever56A]

The Oklahoma Sooner Women Basketball team played 29 1/2 minutes of pretty good basketball on Saturday to defeat the Texas Tech Red Raiders 73-55 at Lloyd Noble Center. In this case, the 29 1/2 minutes was enough for the Sooners to win by 18 points. Those anthracite uniforms must have something to them as the Sooners are 9-0 in the alternate uniforms under Coach Baranczyk. You might be asking yourself what about those other 10 1/2 minutes that the Sooners did not play pretty good baseketball? The Red Raiders won those minutes 15-8. Giving up 15 points is not a bad thing in what amounts to a quarter of a game, but scoring only 8 points is. In the first 3:41 minutes of the game OU scored 14 points by making 4 three's and one 2-point bucket. In the next 10 1/2 minutes the Sooners made 4 two-point buckets to score those 8 points. The Sooners need to avoid these quarter long skids during a game.

I think a subtle change was made in the second half yesterday by the coaches. We will see going forward. The Sooner bench play was reduced in the 2nd half which leaves the starters on the floor more of the time than normally. The five starters played 9 more minutes in the second half than they did in the first. I think that helped the Sooners to not have that scoring lull in the second half that they had in the first half. I do hope this one-game 'trend' continues. The other subtle change was Johnson played the 19 minutes in the game for the third time this season. This might have been a "she is playing well, let her go more" thought or it might have been a change. I will admit, I have had trouble warming up to Johnson offense, but she does help the defense I think and she does score enough to play as she scored 9 yesterday.

The Sooners moved to 4-1 in Big 12 play and is currently in 3rd place all by themselves. In first is K-State and I-State with 5-0 records as K-State defeated Texas by 3 at home and I-State defeated Baylor by 3 at home yesterday. Oklahoma's next opponent, Houston. is 2-3 as they defeated TCU at home. Houston plays West Virginia (3-2) on Wednesday. Texas, the next midweek opponent for OU is 3-2. Texas plays Kansas (2-3) in their mid week game, followed by OSU on Saturday before they host OU.

OU shot the ball well except for the 2Q. OU shot 50% in the 1Q, 55.6% in the 3Q and 40.0% in the 4Q. In the 3Q they shot 27.8%. that contributed to the 8 points in the 10 minutes scoring lull. The Sooners were 21 of 40 shots inside the arc for 52.5%. They shot 8 of 27 on three's for 29.8% which is decent. The Sooners only shot 9 free throw but made 7 of them for 77.8%. the big stat for Oklahoma was that they only had 12 turnovers. This is the fifth game in a row where the Sooners have had 14 or less turnovers for a 12.6 average over the 5 conference games. The Sooners complimented that stat with 25 assists and 11 steals in the game.

Vann led the Sooners with 20 points, 5 rebounds and 5 assists. Keys played well with 15 points 2 rebounds, 5 assists and 2 steals. Keys was 5 of 5 from the field with 3 three's. Verhulst added 11 points with 4 rebounds and 3 assists. Williams added 10 points, 5 rebounds and 4 assists. Johnson had those 9 points off the bench and 6 rebounds (3 offensive and 3 defensive) with 2 steals of her own.

The steals and turnover numbers allowed to post positive stats for points off of turnovers as Tech had 24 turnovers during the game. Oklahoma outscored Tech 28 to 8 on points off of turnovers. The Sooners also had 15 fast break points to Tech's 7. OU outscored Tech 40 - 22 in the paint despite Tech out rebounding the Sooners 35 to 32.

Here is the Sooner staff writers article about the game.

https://soonersports.com/news/2024/1/13 ... tech-by-18

The Sooners do not play a mid-week game this week which allows them to stay home without cold weather travel until the weekend. The Sooners will play at Houston on Saturday and then in Austin on Wednesday in consecutive road games.

The Sooners can use the week to work on the things they need to improve and get ready for the consecutive road games.

Boomer Sooner!