Cade Cunningham Highlights 29 Points vs Oral Roberts – YouTube
While I was in Denver the O State Cowboys beat Oakland (Michigan) to improve to 4-0. I confess I didn’t watch the game, but that will probably be the only game I’ll miss the remainder of the season which involves Cade Cunningham.
On Tuesday night inside of Gallagher-Iba Arena… Cade led Mike Boynton’s Cowboys past Oral Roberts University to improve to 5-0 on the season. Next up for Cade is a Saturday 2:00pm game against Wichita State which will close out the bulk of O State’s non-conference slate heading into an uber rugged Big 12 slate.
I’ve made a point of watching and scouting the Big 12 this season and currently I would rank the Big 12 as the No. 1 basketball conference in America this season by a thin margin over the Big 10. The reason I ultimately went with the Big 12 is Kansas, Baylor, and the Cade Factor. The conference very much as it did last season has two programs in Kansas and Baylor who could garner No. 1 seeds in the regional draws. Plus…Cade is the odds on favorite to win National Player of the Year.
If Cade wins the awrd he’ll become the fifth player since 2007 from the Big 12 to win the NPOTY if I have this stored correctly in my basketball mind. Kevin Durant (Texas), Blake Griffin (OU), Buddy Hield (OU), Trey Young (OU), and then potentially Cade (O State). I may be missing a Kansas player in there somewhere. How could it be OU has three winners and Kansas doesn’t have a NPOTY winner. I need to recheck this on Google.
Plus…the conference with West Virginia, Texas, Texas Tech, and Oklahoma has four other teams which should make the NCAA field. As of now O State is prohibited fom playing in this year’s NCAA Tournament due to the LaMont Evans situation Brad Underwood left behind in Stillwater after his one season. But even with that obstacle we should all have a very clear picture of what Cade Cunningham is after eighteen Big 12 regular season games plus the Big 12 tourney in Kansas City.
I mean… what we’re going to see night in and night out is how Cade’s game translates in a conference in which a targeted player like Cade will be defended by some of the best college basketball players in America this season.
As a passionate hoops fan in Oklahoma this is another primary reason I’m not all that bummed by Sam Presti tanking this season with the Thunder. What I’m going to enjoy witnessing is how Presti takes all of this loot he has accumulated and turns it into Cade Cunningham becoming the franchise face of the Oklahoma City Thunder in this summer’s NBA draft… or at least how he tries to do it.
This will be fascinating for me to chronicle in a hoops journal of sorts.