I’m not sure what to write about Porter Moser’s basketball team right now. I want to be fair. Don’t want to knee jerk and overreact to the Sooners’ seventh loss in their last eight games.
But I also don’t run a little fluffy homery blog either. I don’t want this to read like a Thunder post game presser. I’d like to say… for the most part I try to tell it like it is.
From the point OU went to Austin at 2-1 in Big 12 play this team has not been the same, or you could just say they’ve been exposed by the fact the level of competition in the rugged Big 12 is just too much for this roster of players.
I’m a very pragmatic blogger. A Libra. I knew going into conference play the Sooners would be challenged to go 8-11 in conference play. I thought the ceiling for OU in this league would be at best a fourth or fifth best place finish in the league.
As of this writing if I were doing a Big 12 poll I would have the Sooners at No. 9 only ahead of West Virginia.
Correctable errors aren’t being corrected. It’s not one thing. One game it’s turnovers like it was in this Bedlam game in Stillwater. Another game it’s OU getting hammered on their defensive boards like it was in Monday’s loss at home to TCU. In another game like the one in Stillwater it was the lack of any real assertive point guard play.
It’s a multitude of things.
I’m not some newbie watching OU hoops. From the point of Johnny Mac’s teams back in the old fieldhouse through yesterday it’s rare I’ve missed an OU basketball game.
I wouldn’t say OU is lacking heart as much as I would say they’re lacking a point guard who will step up and lead the team. Porter Moser can’t do this from the bench.
Jordan Goldwire is a senior transfer from Duke who struggles on the offensive end of the floor. Bijuan Cortez is a freshman not ready for the rigors of the rugged Big 12. Austin Reaves now plays for the Lakers and Davion Harmon who should have been the Sooners’ point guard this season transferred to play for Lon Kruger’s buddy Dana Altman in Oregon.
It you’re a real sports fans in Norman the real story beyond Caleb Williams going to USC is that Porter Moser doesn’t have a point guard who can handle the challenges this league presents every single possession.
On Saturday at Gallagher-Iba, I only witnessed two OU players who I thought were competitively engaged. That would be Tanner Grove and EJ Harkless.
Tanner scored 23 points and was the lone bright spot in this loss in Bedlam I. EJ Harkless did score 15 points, but he also committed a Westbrookian eight turnovers and appeared to blow up anytime the Sooners needed to hunker down and run an offense of any sort.
The other OU players went a combined 7-32 from the field. Seniors Jalen Hill and Moj Gibson both played two of the softest games I’ve seen from either of them in their OU basketball careers.
Jacob Grove and Ethan Chargois gave the Sooners virtually nothing coming off the bench. As in nothing.
I honestly don’t know what else to say. Your season was on the brink and you’re playing in a rivalry game against an Oklahoma State team which is on probation and has its own plethora of offensive challenges and only Tanner Grove shows up to play.
OU has eight Big 12 games remaining. At home the Sooners get Texas, Texas Tech, O State, and West Virginia. On the road the Sooners play Kansas, Kansas State, Iowa State, and Texas Tech. Tell me where you see four or five wins in those eight basketball games.
OU’s Season on the Brink went the wrong way this week in a draconian way. These were two games the Sooners desperately needed. It was the first time in OU hoops history they lost to TCU in Norman. It was Mike Boynton’s third straight win in Bedlam and Cade Cunningham is now a Detroit Piston.
My advice to first year coach Porter Moser right now would be to not worry about making the Big Dance, but instead to take his team to a level of play where they can execute basketball basics as a team and hopefully find a way as a team to play forty minutes of basketball at a Power 5 level befitting a program which in fact has a storied basketball history.
My wife was friends with the sister of the second wife of Bobby Knight. Back when Season on the Brink was just released and then became a NY Times bestseller…I obviously bought and read the book. I loved it.
So around this time Gina told my wife she was heading to Bloomington to spend a week with her sister and Bob Knight. I asked her if she would take my book and get it autographed by Coach Knight.
True story. When Gina got back she handed my wife my copy of Season on the Brink and another hard copy of a book titled Bob Knight: His Own Man by Joan Mellon.
Evidently…Coach Knight was so outraged by how he was portrayed by John Feinstein in Season on the Brink he then worked with an English Lit professor from Temple named Joan Mellon to write the second book.
So I look in my copy of Season on the Brink and it’s not autographed. Then I open my copy of Joan Mellon’s book and it’s autographed by Coach Knight with a note attached.
The note read:
Mike,
You wasted your time reading the other book. This book better depicts who I really am.
Best wishes, Bob Knight
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In closing this post…
Hang in there, Coach Moser and always remember ‘Player makes the coach.’ That never changes…. just ask Greg Popovich.