Are the Sooner women a serious team?
The way they performed at Texas and Vanderbilt have been huge steps backward
Clearly, I jumped the gun.
I mistook the Oklahoma women finally winning the game they’d failed to win for so long for their having returned to the same area code as those great teams from yesteryear, when Final Fours and conference crowns felt like reasonable goals and Sweet 16s like no big deals.
OU stunned then-No. 2 South Carolina in overtime, 94-82, on Jan. 22 and two more victories followed and, yes, it really did lift the season’s ceiling. It did not, however, as I claimed it to have, “reinforce” the floor.
Had it, what’s happened to the Sooners their last two outings would not have happened. That is, against No. 4 Texas and No. 5 Vanderbilt, even on the Longhorns’ and Commodores’ home floors, OU would not have been beaten by the end of the first quarter in both.
Against the Longhorns, the Sooners trailed 19-10 after a frame and soon enough it was 25-12 and 37-16, halftime still some time away.
Against the Commodores, the Sooners trailed 31-19 after a frame and soon enough it was 44-21 and 51-25, halftime still some time away.
No, they are not that bad, but they’re capable of playing that badly and have played that badly several times this season, leaving the operative question to be this:
Are the Sooner women a serious basketball team?
