A tale of two very different teams

Moser's Sooner men, Baranczyk's Sooner women approaching March Madness from two very different positions

Oklahoma women’s basketball coach Jennie Baranczyk coaches against Texas Feb. 28 at Lloyd Noble Center. (AP Photo)

In Austin, looking for some NCAA tournament insurance, the Oklahoma men played poorly and lost, the Longhorns dropping the Sooners 94-80.

In the quarterfinal round of the Big 12 tournament in Kansas City, the Oklahoma women played poorly and won, topping TCU 69-53.

You could say both games went as expected because about every time coach Porter Moser’s men play poorly, which is frequent, they lose. 

Not every time because they also played poorly against Oklahoma State and Cincinnati, their last two victories, wins without which they’re outside the NCAA bubble.

As for coach Jennie Baranczyk’s women, when they play well, they win. Also, since conference play began, most every time they play poorly, they also win, which is precisely how they became the No. 1 seed at their final Big 12 tourney in the first place.

For the men, it’s another head-scratcher. Not because we haven’t become accustomed to head-scratchers since Moser came to Norman. Indeed, beginning about the third week of the conference slate in all three of his seasons, head-scratchers have been the norm.

It’s how they’re head-scratchers that keep the head-scratchers coming, because they’re never the same.

Saturday, they found a way to score 45 points in a single half, the same number of points they scored the last time they were on the road, at Iowa State, the entire game, and still, somehow, they played the Cyclones closer than they played the Horns.

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Forty-five was also the number of points they scored in the first half against Houston, two games ago, in the real outlier of the group.

In that one, they kept up with the conference’s and nation’s best team until a Cougar buzzer beater beat them.

Saturday, because they played no defense after the half, despite it being their alleged identity, Texas was off to the races, speeding up the game with transition dunk after transition dunk, occasionally punctuated by a transition 3.

Texas went on a 10-2 run to begin the half, taking a 50-37 edge from which OU never climbed closer than 10 points. It was only then the basket trading really began, the Sooners scoring 43 points over the game’s final 16:32 and the Horns 44 over the last 16:24.

The mystery is why OU lets it self get led into ugly games by teams playing ugly and barnburners against teams burning barns, like it doesn’t have a say in the matter.

You’d think all this time later there might be a winning identity the Sooners would prefer play to, yet it either hasn’t been identified, the players are not bought into it or it’s hair-brained to begin with and that’s why the program’s peaked in December or January three straight seasons.

Oklahoma men’s basketball coach Porter Moser coaches against Kansas Feb. 17 at Lloyd Noble Center. (AP Photo).

Javian McCollum and Otega Oweh combined for 12 points on 5 of 16 shooting, par for the course or close to it since early in the conference season.

Rivaldo Soares, now entrenched in the starting lineup in a case of better-late-than-never, and Jalon Moore combined for 37 points on 11 of 19 shooting. 

Small comfort for the fans, but the shot dispersion, at least, makes more sense.

For the women, it was one of those games they were winning the first half of the conference season.

The Sooners played a couple clunker quarters, they missed a ton of shots, layups included, and barely surpassed 40 percent shooting, finishing at 41.7 (25 of 60). Yet, the Horned Frogs fell short of 30 percent (17 of 59).

Despite that, they managed to pull within 45-42 after once trailing by 16, yet one thing Baranczyk’s Sooners really know how to do is close.

A layup from Payton Verhulst with 8:52 remaining put OU on top 56-45 and never again was TCU within 10.

You’d rather see the Sooner women playing two strong halves than two strong quarters now that the postseason’s upon them, yet  there’s no denying their body of work, nor the fact that playing well short of optimal doesn’t have to yield a loss.

Perhaps you missed it but the net gain of taking down Texas a second time, a 71-70 victory secured Feb. 28, is OU, after being out of the forecasted brackets entirely coming out of non-conference play, has vaulted all the way into the NCAA’s top-16 committee ranking in the 16th spot.

For that reason, ESPN NCAA tourney bracketologist Charlie Creme right now has the Sooners facing Stony Brook in a first-round contest at, get this, Lloyd Noble Center, the winner taking on the winner between Colorado and South Dakota State.

How about that?

Next up for the men, they’ve got TCU at the conference tourney Wednesday in Kansas City.

Had the Horned Frogs not fallen to Central Florida in Fort Worth, it would have been Texas all over again.

Small favors.

The women get today off and face Iowa State at 1:30 p.m. Monday. 

Right now, they’re hosting, but win that one and the tourney crown the next day and their seed’s bound to get better as their draw becomes easier.

For one of these teams, expecting good things to happen still makes all the sense in the world.