OU ousted from Big 12, have Sooners done enough?
OU fans didn’t have high hopes for the Big 12 Tournament after learning about Rivaldo Soares and John Hugley being out.
But whatever hope remained was drained upon learning Javian McCollum reinjured his left shoulder in the final minutes of Tuesday’s practice.
No Soares, Hugley or McCollum? No victory. OU fought back in the second half but was downed 77-70 against TCU on Wednesday afternoon in Kansas City.
The Sooners are now 20-12 overall and will await their fate on Selection Sunday.
More on that in a minute.
To the game, though, where OU just struggled to play with pace. It was a healthy lead for TCU throughout the entire game. A 14-point lead at halftime that ballooned to as much as 19. A run by the Sooners makes the final score respectable, but that’s about it.
Game 32 Takeaways from the couch
*Just didn’t have it defensively for the second straight game. Understand you’re having five guys play together that probably haven’t played together often. But that effort wasn’t very good, especially in the first half.
*To go with those strange lineups, goes the turnovers. OU was awful in that department. It had 10 in the first half and finished with 18. In a game you needed to be almost perfect, OU was far from it.
*Jalon Moore continued to do Jalon Moore things. He had a rough day at the free throw line, but he was the anchor everywhere else. He finished with 16 points and nine rebounds.
*The sophomores showed up, too. Strong outings by Milos Uzan and Otega Oweh, who both needed it. Uzan had 15 points and four assists. Oweh had his best game since Bedlam last month, with 16 points, four rebounds and three steals. But? The two combined for 10 turnovers.
Tournament pitch
OK, head coach Porter Moser hasn’t really had to dig deep into the tournament plea. But he was ready following the Wednesday loss.
The battle cry? OU was 18-6 this season at full strength. The Sooners are 2-6 since the injuries to Hugley, Soares and McCollum have happened.
OU doesn’t have a bad loss. This is true. All 12 are Quad 1 losses. Not one loss in the Quad 2, 3 or 4 realm.
Moser said postgame he believes all three guys will be back to full strength by the weekend. And certainly for next week. So maybe it has been a rough month of injuries for OU, but it would be getting healthy at just the right time.
“This team is very close,” Moser said. “They’re very, very hungry. They knew we’ve been down. We stayed healthy, almost the whole year. We were 18-6 at full strength with the top-20 schedule in the country. And we just hit this injury bug the last seven or eight games and the guys know it and they know it’s about to come to an end.
“We are going to be at full strength probably Friday or Saturday. I thought these guys were absolutely — had tremendous belief in each other, belief in one another, even knowing we were guys down.”
We’ll all find out together Selection Sunday.
