A team worth watching

First-year coach Jennie Baranczyk's Sooner women are shockingly good

No cheering in the press box.

You’ve heard the phrase, yes?

It’s verboten.

Not all right.

Not cool.

But it happens.

Quietly.

Internally.

Sportswriters root for something new, for the unexpected. They root for great stories (which tend to be great because they’re new or unexpected).

We root for the kind of thing going on at Lloyd Noble Center this season, where first-year coach Porter Moser’s Sooner men appear better than advertised and, more stunning, first-year coach Jennie Baranczyk’s Sooner women have been shot out of a cannon, not so unlike the team Baranczyk’s predecessor coached some 22 years ago.

Baranczyk’s predecessor, of course, is Sherri Coale, whose way-back-when starting five included Stacey Dales (Brockville, Ontario), Phyleshea Whaley (Slaton, Texas), LaNeishea Caufield (Ada),  Caton Hill (Ada) and Sunny Hardeman (Norman), a group that led the program from 15 wins and two games in the WNIT one season to 25 wins and the Sweet 16 the next.

Baranczyk’s first team, and a starting five that now includes Kennady Tucker (North Little Rock, Ark.), Kelbie Washington (Norman), Madi Williams (Fort Worth), Taylor Robertson (McPherson, Kan.) and Liz Scott (Houston), is threatening to do all that and more.

A year ago, Coale’s final squad went 12-12 after her previous two won only 8 and 12 games, good for a three-season absence from NCAA tourney consideration after 18 straight trips to the dance.

This one, Baranczyk’s first campaign after nine years and 192 victories at Drake, following Sunday’s conference-opening 97-91 victory at Texas Tech — a final score only forged after the Lady Raiders hit their last seven shots to make a laugher appear serious — has already won a dozen, making the Sooners 12-1 for the first time since 2006-07, when they won 17 of 18 to begin the season behind a sophomore post, name of Courtney Paris, perhaps you’ve heard of her?

That team went 13-3 in Big 12 Conference play. Baranczyk’s unit’s not expected to do that, but who knows, because it’s no less likely than what’s already happened.

The Sooners scored 73 points opening night at South Dakota and won by two. They weren’t supposed to beat a Coyote team that’s right now riding a nine-game winning streak.

The thing of it was, it’s still the only time the Sooners have put up fewer than 78 points and, averaging 89.7, only DePaul’s putting up more.

Beyond that, OU might claim the best 3-point shooter in the history of the college game, Taylor Robertson, whose two 3-pointers against the Lady Raiders pushed her career total to 382, 10 off the all-time Big 12 mark, owned by Kansas State’s Laurie Koehn, 

Robertson has real shots — get it, shots? — at becoming both the nation’s most prolific 3-point shooter and it’s most accurate, too.

To date, she’s canned 382 of 858, or 44.5 percent of her attempts, and her season figure’s 60 of 125, or 48 percent.

The all-time NCAA total’s 497, set by Ohio State’s Kelsey Mitchell, and the all-time percentage is 44.7 (398 of 890), forged by Connecticut’s Kaleena Mosqueda-Lewis.

If OU can play enough games and Robertson can keep shooting at the clip she’s been shooting, she could rewrite the whole book.

The Sooners also have Madi Williams, who can score from anywhere, netted 24 against Tech, and averages 17.2 and 8.2 rebounds.

Though Ana Llanusa’s been lost for the season — again, to an unspecified leg or knee injury, this time while averaging 17.3 points through 10 games — OU’s continued to roll, anyway.

The program’s next great point guard, who might eventually rank next to Dales and Danielle Robinson, is on site, too, Kelbie Washington, a two-time state champ at Norman High, who’s dished 20 assists her last two games.

The team’s just fun.

What happened to the program the last several years of Coale’s tenure remains a mystery.

It became a turnstile, losing good players and great prospects regularly to the transfer portal, with few coming the other way, making for some alarmingly short rosters.

Coale, once a coach players loved to play for, for whatever reason, became something other than that and the program lost traction.

If you’ve been watching for years, perhaps you’ve seen what I began seeing as far back as the 2013-14 season.

Development slowed, players failed to find their confidence and, eventually, played in greater fear of making mistakes than of losing, which can’t happen.

Coale ran a motion offense and Baranczyk runs one, too, though the way the new coach talks about it, the players must have more autonomy, finding their space as they react to their teammates finding theirs.

Where previous squads became stuck in the mud, looking for an unmissable shot, Baranczyk’s Sooners are fine with a good one, revel in finding it and can’t wait to get it up.

The joy is back.

The confidence Baranczyk imported from Des Moines to Norman has washed over her players and the difference is night and day.

Next up, Wednesday, the Sooners get a crack at 14th-ranked Iowa State on their LNC floor.

They are new.

They are unexpected.

Give them a look.

You may love it.

You’ll be watching a great story, at least.