Sooner Men's BB - Making the Trip to Lawrence - Saturday 1 PM !

[OUBeliever56A]

The Oklahoma Sooners will travel to Lawrence in the cold weather to play the Jayhawks at 1 PM on Saturday. With both teams tied for 1st Place at 1-0 before their mid-week games this week, it is a little surprising that they now play on Saturday with 3-1 records and in a tie for 4th Place tied with 8 other Big 12 teams at 1-1. The Big 12 is a very tough conference. The Sooners lost on the road to TCU by 9 points while the Jayhawks lost at Central Florida by 5 points.

From what I can see, the Jayhawks are front-court loaded and struggle to get consistent play past 4 players this season. Despite that, they are 13-2 with a 4-game winning streak and a 9-game winning streak with wins over #6 Kentucky, #5 Tennessee, #4 UConn and TCU RV's. They have lost to Marquette (T-#11) and UCF this season. The Jayhawks were ranked #3 earlier this week before their loss to UCF on the road.

The Sooners were ranked #9 before their loss to TCU on the road. Oklahoma has a 10-game winning streak and a 3-game winning streak. The Sooner losses are to #7 North Carolina and TCU who receives votes from the pollsters.

Kansas is lead by two frontcourt players and three guards. Three are seniors or grad students and one is a junior. The leading scorer for Kansas is McCullar Jr. He is a transfer from Texas Tech two years ago. He is scoring 19.8 points and grabbing 6.7 rebounds as a 6'7" guard. He leads Kansas in 3-point shots and three's made and he does have 68 assists as well. He shoots 48.5% from the field and plays 35 minutes a game. The other scorer is Dickinson, the 7'2" 260 lbs Center that transferred to Kansas from Michigan for this season. He scores 18.9 points and 11.9 boards a game in 32 minutes. Dickinson does have 16 made 3's. Somehow, he has committed only 25 fouls in 15 games. The third tall person starting for Kansas is Adams, Jr, the 6'7" muscle man who plays 32 minutes a game and uses his size well. He scores 12.4 PPG and grabs only 4.8 rebounds. He does not score from very far from the bucket.

The other two guards are Harris, Jr, who Sooner fans know well. He is the ball handler when Kansas needs a bucket. He scores only 6.9 points a game while picking up 2.2 rebounds. He leads Kansas with 106 assists and also has 41 turnovers. He has made 15 three's. Harris, Jr plays 35+ minutes agame. The remaining starter is a 6'3" freshman guard, Jackson. He scores 5.4 points and has 1.5 rebounds a game. He is 4th on the team in assists with 15 starts. He does not take 5 shots game on average. He is a very good free throw shooter. Make him shoot the ball instead of getting fouled.

Four other players play most overy game for the Jayhawks. They are; Furphy (6'9" G FR), Timberlake (6'4" G Grad), Braun (6'10" F Grad) and McDowell (6'4" G FR). Combined they score 14.7 PPG and 7.2 rebounds a game. The bench is not a strength for the Jayhawks this year as they play 39.2 minutes a game.

I think it is the 9 players of Kansas against the 8-player rotation for OU and whose players inside get in foul trouble first in Kansas. The other team gets the advantage if that happens, That does not sound like a good omen to me considering the game location and the history. Kansas shoots 18 freebies a game.

For the season, OU scores more points and gives up fewer also. OU puts up 1 more shot a game. Kansas shoots a tad better from the field but OU leads the way at the charity stripe. (I hope that matters on Saturday.) The two teams handle the ball the same with 13 TOs a game but Kansas has a few more assists than OU.

For me the game boils down to this. OU needs to get McCollum and Oweh off to a good start and Oweh stay out of foul trouble. Then Godwin, Hugley IV, Moore and Soares need to play big and smart (no ticky tacky fouls) and offset Dickinson and Adams JR inside. I think Oweh and Darthart can stick to McCullar Jr. as Uzan and McCollum handle the two guards for Kansas. I would like to see Uzan use his size advantage on Harris Jr and maybe slow his passes down some. Furphy and Timberlake will shoot when they are on the floor.

It would be wonderful for the Sooners and Coach Moser break through the Jayhawk ceiling on Saturday. Three of the four losses to Kansas in the last two years have been by 2, 3, and 4 points. OU has been close. This year's edition of the Sooners, is a better squad than the last two by some margin. I think Kansas is a less diverse team this year as well. The Sooners need to approach the game with confidence. They have played close enough to win, now just go win on Saturday!

Oh BTW, this is a Top 10 matchup between OU and Kansas per the rankings on Monday. It should be a very good game to watch.

Here is the Sooner staff writers article about the Kansas game.

https://soonersports.com/news/2024/1/12 ... 0-showdown

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 Mark Neely (PxP) and Tim Welsh (analyst) on the call.

Boomer Sooner!

[OU Chinaman]

...who knows when or if we will ever take on the Jayhawks in Lawrence again.

It's been so long since OU won there, a victory today would be extra sweet.

Really want this game and think the SOONERS have a legitimate shot.
Will tune in with high expectations!

[RussC]

Hey we trail by only one at halftime

[OU Chinaman]

...WASN'T TO BE!
Was encouraged by the the SOONERS recovery from a near disastrous start to only trail by 1 at Half.
But, OU showed in the 2nd half they were not KU's equal.
78-66 Final.

Think Moser may fare better in the SEC.

[soonerindallas]

Same song, 50th verse. I do like this team, but the bottom line is we need to get some elite "difference makers" to compete a whole game vs the KU's of the world. We need to start landing the 5* guys (like the one we lost last week who decided to go to Providence). KU gets several of those each year, and you have to be able to match up with that kind of talent.

Like I said, I like Moshier and this team - we just can't compete with the KUs of the world though right now.

[OUBeliever56A]

After a very fast start by Kansas in which they led Oklahoma 12-4 after the first 4 minutes of the 1st half. But the Sooners battled back to outplay Kansas for the next 9:32 minutes of the opening half to talk the lead 27-26 on a Jalon Moore dunk. Kansas led 38-37 right before the half but OU missed on two opportunities to take the lead but committed two turnovers which did not allow the Sooners to get off a shot.

Oklahoma shot 48.3% from the field including 33.3% from 3-point territory and 75% from the free throw line in the first half. But Kansas had 5 more shots from the field due to turnovers and offensive rebounds which allowed their 44.1%, 14.3% from the field and three to keep still lead. The 7 of 7 free throws made by Kansas was key as well. All things considered, Oklahoma was in a good position at the half.

After 4 and half minutes of play in the second half Kansas led 48-46. Over the next 3 minutes Kansas scored two three's (McCuller and Furphy) and a free throw by McCullar to lead 55-46 before Uzan scored to bring the Kansas lead back down to 7. In the next 3 minutes 3 buckets by Kansas were offset by the emergence of Luke Northweather for OU as he swished 2 three's for the sooners to move the score to 61-54. Quickly, very quickly, the Jayhawks moved the lead to 12 as they scored 9 points to OU's two points to lead 70-58 at the 7:16 mark of the final half. In a little over eight minutes Kansas overscored 22 to 12. That is in essence was the ball game for the Sooners. Both teams scored 8 points in the last 7 minutes of play as Kansas won 78-66.

It seemed that on defense Oklahoma was unable to put up much resistance for stopping Dickinson inside, McCullar Jr from getting his shoots or going to the free throws (10 of 11), and Adams Jr and Harris Jr from making above average contributions to the offense. As a quad, the four Kansas players scored 67 points of Kansas' 78 points. That is 9 points above their four-player average. Kansas did n=make a little change as they started Furphy instead of Jackson and they shortened their bench to 6 players who played 189 of 200 minutes.

Oklahoma on the other hand, struggled to get good shots for most of the game. McCollum did score 17 points but it was on only 9 shots in the game as he was able to go to the line and make 6 of 7 free throws to boost his point total. But McCollum did have 6 turnovers in the game as he was pressured everywhere when he had the ball. Uzan had a good game with 15 points to play above his average. Oweh got started better yesterday but was hed to 12 points on 15 shots. Other than Northweathers two three's, the rest of the Sooners were pretty quiet offensively. I was surprised that matching up with Adams was as difficult as it seemed during the game.

The 'details' of the game favored Kansas in a large way. Kansas had 15 to 6 points on fast breaks. Kansas led in points in the paint 46 to 26. Kansas had 2 turnovers (yes, 2) to OU's 11 which not bad at all, but when the other team has only 2, 11 still looks bad. The points off those turnovers favored Kansas 11-2. It was a win, in the end a comfortable win, by Kansas yesterday.

Here is the Sooner staff writers article about the OU @ Kansas game on Saturday.

https://soonersports.com/news/2024/1/13 ... o-3-kansas

The loss for OU was tempered a bit as there were two other interesting outcomes in the Big 12 yesterday.

The biggest was that Houston lost again on the road, this time to TCU. in a very close game throughout, Miller of TCU scored on a layup with 6 seconds left to win the game for TCU. Oklahoma losing to TCU early this week does not look so bad after that result.

The other shocker was that West Virginia upset Texas in Morgantown by 3 points, 76-73. West Virginia was in the lead the final 15 minutes of the game and led by as much as 11. Texas never had a shot to win the game going down the stretch.

The third game to note wa sthat Tech never led in their game until the final 30 seconds against K-State. Tech scored with 30 seconds left to take the lead 60-59 and it held up for the win.

Baylor defeated Cincinnati in Waco 62-59. But Cincy had four shots in the last 90 seconds of the game to take the lead or tie the game and missed all four times.

Texas Tech and Baylor are in first place in the Big 12 with 3-0 records.

Oklahoma, who is now 1-2 in conference, hosts West Virginia (1-2) on Wednesday night in a 7 PM game and then travels to Cincinnati (1-2) for a Saturday game @ Noon. Two wins for OU would look very good right now.

Good luck this week to the Sooners!

Boomer Sooner!