After another pre-tourney reality check, Sooners starting over in the Big Dance
In her moments apart from the team she coaches, you wonder if Oklahoma women’s basketball coach Jennie Baranczyk ever says it.
“Not again.”
She has resurrected a proud program.
She has once again brought the NCAA tournament to Lloyd Noble Center, where the whole idea is the home team wins twice before heading back to the Sweet 16, and tonight begins that process, Oklahoma (24-7) meeting Big Sky champ Idaho (29-5).
But it’s not as it should have been.
The Sooners were supposed to be coming into tonight with a No. 3 seed rather than a No. 4, the payoff being not having to face a No. 1 in the Sweet 16.
They were supposed to enter tonight from a position of strength and it appeared they might after trouncing Florida 82-64 in their first SEC tournament game two Thursdays ago.
Yet, the day after, it was LSU and they died a thousand deaths, falling 112-78.
It was embarrassing, outrageous and confidence-killing, and before you say “but LSU was ranked No. 6,” OU was ranked No. 7.
“I think one of the things we do really well is we’re very, very blue collar,” Baranczyk said Thursday. “We’re able to roll up our sleeves, put our boots on and go to work.
“I think we were able to look in the mirror and we didn’t blame anybody else. We just said, ‘OK, we failed.’”
That may be laudable, but it’s not optimal.
Maybe lose to the screamingly, loudly-dressed coach Kim Mulkey’s Tigers by 12 points, or six, or beat them. And whatever you do, don’t die as you’ve died before:
As you lost by 19 to LSU on Jan. 18. As you lost by 41 at South Carolina last season. As you lost by 19 at Kansas on the last day of the ’23-’24 regular season. As you lost by 22, scoring only 45, to close February the year before at Texas.
Don’t rebuild.
Just build.
“You just have to flush it … Everybody is 0-0. You win to keep going. It’s kind of like you’ve just got to keep playing,” forward Sahara Williams said. “I think we’ve gotten better. Humility builds a lot of character.”
Williams is both telling the truth and speaking in clichés because it’s all the Sooners can do with only the NCAA tournament left to play.
Too bad it’s not in the same ballpark as what OU might have done, finishing the SEC tournament near or at its zenith, having last played a game it could be proud of, flushing nothing and continuing to climb instead.
But here we are.
The Sooners have two games to not only regain momentum, but build upon it quickly having regained it.
Baranczyk was asked a question about chemistry, and what she had to say said plenty.
“Just because you’re nice and you like each other doesn’t mean you have good chemistry, and just because you don’t doesn’t mean that you don’t …” she said. “The nice thing is they really like each other off the floor and our freshmen have really fit in.
“What’s been really fun is to see that on-court chemistry start to grow. We’ve had moments that we look really, really good and we’ve had moments that we kind of forget about our chemistry and we try to fix things ourselves.”
As though she’s copping to the truth without the indignity of spelling it out, explaining her team is capable of playing very well but has yet to escape self-sabotage for good.
Still, it has to be nice to have the nation’s best freshman in Aaliyah Chavez (18.4 ppg, 4.2 apg); an All-American or close center in Raegan Beers (15.7 ppg, 10.4 rpg), who must stay out of foul trouble and play more than her 24.6 average minutes per game; a leader like Payton Verhulst (11.9 ppg, 5.5 rpg, 3.2 apg), who remains capable of going off from deep despite her pedestrian 29.0 3-point percentage; and Williams (12.5 ppg, 7.9 rpg, 3.8 apg), who can sometimes be the difference all by herself.
Occasionally, their teammates are very, very good, too.
“I think … we’re at our best when we’re having fun and we’re out there and not thinking about making mistakes or things like that,” Verhulst said. “I think that’s something that we’ve seen in a lot of our good games this year.”
Agreed.
But it’s performing when it’s not fun that’s likely to dictate how far the Sooners go.
Because playing LSU may never be fun and playing South Carolina — who OU happened to beat in overtime this season, and who should be waiting in the Sweet 16 — shouldn’t be either.
That’s the next step for Baranczyk’s program: to win when it’s hard at a much higher rate.
Maybe this time.