It was an interesting night in Stillwater on several fronts. Mike Holder allowed approximately 3,500 inside Gallagher Iba Arena even with Payne County at the top of Oklahoma’s COVID-19 rates. The fact this many people were allowed inside kind of surprised me given we’re headed into the toughest two months of the pandemic.
O State entered the game over Jaime Dixon’s Horned Frogs as a Vegas five point favorite which I thought was about right.
But for the second game in a row Cade Cunningham came out of the gates slow and in fact O State’s best ball in the first half was played with Cade on the bench.
In this season of empty or mostly empty arenas the energy is going to have to come from within the players themselves. O State is going to have to start coming out of the gate with more focus if they want to win Big 12 games.
This is a brutally tough, tough league. TCU filled my No. 8 preseason slot in the conference and you can’t lose games like this if you aspire to finish in the top half of the league standings come March. O State isn’t eligible to play in the Big Dance because of the LaMont Evans penalty, but still you want your ball club to get better every night out and reach their potential.
It doesn’t shock me TCU won the game, but it does concern me for the sake of O State’s season they’re coming out of the gates so slowly to start games. They did the same thing in Milwaukee in the road win over Marquette…. their best win to date. Somebody needs to rev the gas pedal on this young basketball team coming off the opening tip.
In the second half Mike Boynton called several timeouts to design PATs (play after timeout) to get Cade in better spots to score the ball, but Boynton’s ball club needs to be doing this more instinctively if they want to be relevant in Big 12 play and help Cade win NPOTY honors.
Cade went for 17 points, 8 rebounds, and 3 assists. Need to see more.
Cade had a chance for his second straight game winner, but his jump shot from the left corner came up a little short at the buzzer.
You want to see the brutal stretch O State has in their next six games? Try this on for size… at Texas, at Texas Tech, West Virginia, at Kansas St which should challenge Iowa State for the conference basement, Kansas, OU, and at West Virginia. I would only have O State as a Vegas favorite in the Bedlam home game versus OU if that.
You don’t bring your ‘A’ game mentality for those games and O State could be 1-6 league-wise coming out of this stretch of games.
This is where Mike Boynton is going to have to morph his team’s offense and create space for Cade on the floor.
Just like in hockey…the two most important words which should be coming out of a coach’s mouth…space and time. It alway’s about space and time on both sides of the ball. Creating it and denying it. This isn’t rocket science.
I watched some of the Thunder’s pre-season game as well. I could very well see Oklahoma City going something like 9-63. They appear to be truly on the cusp of being a very bad basketball team if they can dump Big Al Horford for a first round pick before winning some games.
Losing games enmasse and having to listen to Michael Cage trying to explain it seem to me more than cruel and unusual punishment for the Thunder fanbase. It’s going to be a cruel winter in Oklahoma City, but when you vote for the racist Birther Trump by a 70% margin … at some point the basketball gods will wreak retribution and come find you in the middle of the night.
Kansas at Texas Tech tonight. I’m ready to roll. Plus, I think I might follow Steven with the New Orleans Pelicans and see how their season goes.