Porter Moser addresses Oklahoma's mental errors
Porter Moser took some time to speak on mental errors Oklahoma has succumbed to during their recent losing streak.
The Sooners are hoping to end their skid on Tuesday, as they have a date with the Kansas State Wildcats. Ahead of the contest, the Oklahoma leader spoke on their most recent loss, a heartbreaker to Texas Tech, and how it slipped away from the Sooners.
“End of the first half was really bothersome. Obviously it’s magnified when you have a one-point loss, but those are things that even you’re taught as an eighth grader. You know, you want the last shot. We should be better on that. They know that. We should be better, especially since it was a dead-ball. We talked about it. So there’s other things,” Moser stated. “We’ve shown, we’ve locked up and had some really good stops defensively lately. We’ve had a bunch of games where we’ve crawled back in, or held our lead, because we’ve got stops. You can’t have multiple lapses defensively in the last five minutes of the game. You can’t. You’ve got to be on it. Your check-offs, everything has got to be on it. You can’t. So we really talked about that the last 48 hours.
“Our lapses defensively in the second half, where you guys got to communicate. It’s loud. We’re at the other end. We’ll practice that today. We’re at the other end, we’re practicing today, no one’s there. It’s you five against a crowd, against this, against their team. You’ve got to communicate, and not break down. You don’t have coaches yelling reminders, ‘Hey, watch the flip! Watch the flip!’ until they get it. In front of the bench, we can shotgun reminders to you. Away from it, we’ve got to be better those last five minutes defensively.”
The loss certainly hurt Oklahoma, but it’s nothing the Sooners can’t overcome. They’ve been among the best teams in the nation at times this season, and will be looking to correct their mental errors and get back to that on Tuesday.
Time will tell, but Porter Moser will have his team roaring and ready to rock against the Wildcats on Tuesday, as Oklahoma looks to bounce back.
Porter Moser identifies biggest issue with Oklahoma this season
Moreover, Oklahoma dropped their second straight, both of which came at home, and the fourth of the last six on Saturday. Of all the reasons that led them to falter again, Porter Moser said it comes from a lack of both discipline and leadership from his team, including on the defensive end.
Moser assessed the 85-84 loss for the No. 11 Sooners to No. 20 Texas Tech during his postgame press conference. He started with his issues with their defense as he felt like they didn’t have the effort or attention to detail that was necessary for them to succeed.
“It’s our issue with this team,” said Moser. “We’ve got a certain some of us that take the foot off the gas defensively.”
“I tip my hat off to Chance McMillan. I thought he had a career night. He was hitting flying shots into the corner. He got one off a re-screen on an end out,” Moser said. “You’ve just got to be down and ready. You know what we’re going to do. They hit on a low action in the far corner against their bench – stuff that we’ve gone over.”
In a game with swings in both directions, Oklahoma had to feel good after taking their largest lead of nine with 7:30 to go. However, from that moment on, Texas Tech closed on a 26-16 run to take it by one.
Games, especially in the Big 12, can come down to the thinnest of margins between wins and losses. With that in mind, Moser hopes they’ll all clean it up in order to overcome this skid that has put Oklahoma below .500 in conference play.
On3’s Sam Gillenwater contributed to this article.