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OU guard Nijel Pack woke up but needs a lot more help to snap eight-game skid

Bob Przybyloby: Bob Przybylo02/04/26BPrzybylo

This is where you start throwing up your hands if you’re an OU basketball fan or head coach Porter Moser.

Because you thought maybe you had unlocked what was ailing the team. Moser never threw in the towel with guard Nijel Pack, kept pouring the confidence into him.

Pack was dreadful during the initial five games of the OU eight-game losing streak. But the last three games? That’s why he’s the dude.

OU (11-11, 1-8) at Kentucky (15-7, 6-3)
When: 8 p.m.
TV: ESPN2

And that’s why it might be even more depressing. Pack has scored more than 20 points in each of the last three games (averaging 23.3). He is shooting 25 for 50 from the field, and a top-notch 14 for 27 from 3-point territory.

He has been that on-court leader. And OU was excruciatingly ‘this close’ in a one-point overtime loss at Missouri and a four-point nail-biter vs. Arkansas.

The bottom appeared to fall out last Saturday in the 79-69 loss vs. Texas. OU was up 61-55 and scored two points in its final nine possessions.

When you want something so badly, sometimes, you make the most mind-blowing mistakes.

OU has held double-digit leads vs. Alabama (11), Arkansas (13) and Texas (14), all in the first half. And then? It just slowly (or sometimes not so slowly) fades away.

The intensity, execution, goes away.

“I just think it comes down to that, honestly,” Pack told SoonerScoop. “That’s really the difference. We showed spurts of a totally different team, and then we let that fire go away, or whatever you want to call it. I think we need more of that, especially in end-of-game situations, the second half, things like that, I think we need to get that fire like how we had in the first half in the majority of these games.

“If we can do that over a longer period of time, we’d be sitting here with a totally different conversation right now. I think the conversation now is how do we do that more consistently, better, get in better shape—is that rotating guys fast? Is that just sitting down, being a man and being a dog on the floor? It comes down to those things, and I think we can do it. We showed we can do it. We just need to do it more often, honestly.”

But the Sooners are still a squad where everyone needs to show up every game. Can’t have a Tae Davis two-point performance in 24 minutes like against Texas. Everybody has to bring their version of the A game, and that simply has not happened.

What version of the Wildcats?

Kentucky has been oh-so confusing. Sometimes, even within the same week. Take last week. The Wildcats got absolutely blitzed at Vanderbilt. And then came back and won at Arkansas on Saturday night.

So maybe you’re hoping, as an OU fan, that Kentucky sleepwalks a bit in thinking this is an easy one. Catch it off guard.

But there’s still Otega Oweh. After hitting two game-winners against the Sooners last season, you know he’d love to make that mark 3-0 against his former squad.

It won’t get any easier, either, for OU. Following the trip to Rupp Arena, it’s off to Nashville and the Commodores on Saturday afternoon. Staring a potential 10-game losing streak right in the face, if nothing changes.

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