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Game Recap
Tortilla Tossin’ Player of the Game: I’m going with Terrence Shannon, who scored 11 points on 3 of 6 with 2 boards, 1 assist, 1 steal and 2 turnovers.
Multi-Purpose Player of the Game: this was not an easy one to choose, I’m going with Mylik Wilson because he sort of had different stats, but wasn’t exactly great either? 2 points, 4 rebounds, 2 steals, an assist and a turnover. I dunno and am at a loss here.
Game Notes:
- It is hard to win on the road in the Big 12. However, championship teams win on the road in the Big 12 and that’s the difference between teams that win Big 12 championships and those that don’t. I thought before the game that OU was much better than their record, at least according to the stats and that ended up being the case. That’s not the end of the world and that’s why it’s tough to get ahead of ourselves when we talk about winning out, or passing Kansas, or whatever. It’s not that it’s wrong to dream big and think about seeding, but there’s a lot of basketball that needs to be played. I’d also fully acknowledge that thinking about those things has zero affect on the team, but it is human to get ahead of yourself a bit and start thinking about what could be if something happens.
- Oklahoma watched the Kansas tape and watched how they got open shots by swinging the ball and they did a fantastic job of doing that. Teams that take bad shots are the best teams to play and OU didn’t take bad shots. It helps to have a guy that careers when you play them, but they made shots.
- Texas Tech shot decently in the first half, 46% and then in the second half the entire thing went cold, 35% from the field and 1 of 10 from beyond the arc. Texas Tech couldn’t hit the broadside of a barn from deep, 2 of 17 for the night and Oklahoma has guarded the 3-point line really well this year, so that wasn’t out of the ordinary. The second half shooting woes were largely a result of the OU defense clamping down and not allowing Texas Tech to get a good shot.
- It helps that OU went from shooting 33% in the 1st half to 70% in the 2nd half. That’s pretty abnormal and 8 of 11 from the 3-point line. That probably won’t happen again for the Sooners for the rest of the year.
- Texas Tech usually dominates the points in the pain, 30-18, so they did, but OU absolutely destroyed from deep, 2 3-point shots to 13 for the Sooners. That’s just dumb.
- This is one of those games where you probably want to flush the game away, but the lunging and jumping at every pump-fake is probably a decent lesson to learn. Close out, but when you leave your feet, you lose your offensive player you are guarding and then someone else is running to contest the shot and the entire thing is out of whack.
- The Sooners dominated the boards, 34-26 and that’s not typical.
- Advanced stats box score? Only Arms, Santos-Silva, and Shannon were players in the positive (that played more than 5 minutes) and your worst players on the court last night were Warren, Williams, McCullar and Obanor.
- Head coach Mark Adams: “We were chasing them the whole second half. That’s not the way we like to play. You have to give Oklahoma all the credit. It was a tale of two halves. They came out and responded after we outplayed them in the first half. They got the momentum and never looked back. I thought we lost some of our poise and teamwork in the second half so that was disappointing for me. We’ll need to go back and work on it. I would rather this happen now than in March. We’ll learn and move on.”
- Up next? Texas Tech returns home on Saturday, February 12th where the Red Raiders will host the Horned Frogs with tip-off at 3:00 p.m. and the game set to be broadcast on ESPN+.
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