Moving forward: Sooner women setting aside what's kept them from their best
We’re going to see.
We’re going to see if coach Jennie Baranczyk’s Oklahoma women’s basketball team can gather its promise for the long haul, rather than tease us with it as it has so many times before.
Back in ’22, when she resuscitated a program that hit a wall at the end of coach Sherri Coale’s tenure, the Sooners hosted two NCAA tournament games, yet lost the second, falling short of the Sweet 16 their No. 4 seed claimed they were supposed to reach.
Two more promising seasons followed, each with No. 5 tourney seeds, each with another second-round bounce from the bracket.
OU finally reached the Sweet 16, a No. 3 seed in tow, only to endure the misfortune of running into Connecticut once it got there and who knew the second-seeded Huskies were actually the nation’s best team?
They were, and not just because they won it all, but because they won it all without playing a single close game. The 82–59 score UConn hung on OU was the same score it posted against South Carolina in the national championship game.
Now?
Now, the Sooners are beginning to look like they might have the gumption to take another big step, not just in the tournament come March (or even April), but as a program. One that lives in the top 10, routinely carries Final Four dreams, regularly brings its best and finally stops playing down to its competition.
That last part has been Baranczyk’s squads’ greatest bugaboo.
Whether it’s been playing fast and loose with the ball, sluggish starts, chasing defensively on one end while missing layups on the other or simply lacking urgency and resolve, they’ve too often allowed inferior opponents to become the better team on given nights.
That’s exactly what happened when the Sooners fell into a 1–3 SEC hole this season: a there-but-not-there performance against Ole Miss, followed by a trip to Kentucky they should have led by 20 rather than seesawing through three quarters before losing by six, followed by a no-confidence, no-chance home-court blowout against LSU (though Payton Verhulst finally hit some 3s, which may have been the canary in OU’s coal mine).
Have you seen them since?
It’s always nice to own one of the nation’s best two or three wins and the Sooners have one after stunning then-No. 2 South Carolina 94-82 in overtime on Jan. 22.
They led by six with 3 minutes to play only to fall apart. And for some reason, like it was two seasons ago, Baranczyk forgot to call a single timeout as they fell apart.
But Raegan Beers tied it before the end, OU’s defense held, overtime arrived and the Sooners outscored the Gamecocks, get this, 19-7 in the extra five-minute frame, getting 15 from freshman point guard Aaliyah Chavez, all without a miss.
Next came a not-very-impressive win at Auburn, but maybe a letdown was predictable.
Thursday night at home against Texas A&M, OU was more than fine, cruising to an 85–58 victory in a game it led by 31 with 7:53 remaining, before Baranczyk emptied the bench.
Proclaiming a whole new world, or as Baranczyk screamed to her team in a circular huddle with cameras and microphones near after beating the Gamecocks, “We’re $@#%##@@ back,” can be a dicey prophecy in the SEC, the nation’s best conference.
On Sunday, for instance, 10th-ranked OU visits No. 4 Texas, which owns two of the season’s three or four best wins, having beaten No. 2 UCLA and South Carolina, back-to-back, on a neutral Las Vegas court in November.
Nonetheless, even should the Longhorns get the best of that one, the Sooners still appear to have reinforced their floor and raised their ceiling.
About Verhulst, beginning with her 5 of 11 3-point barrage against LSU, she’s knocked down 44.4 percent (12 of 27) over her last four games.
Chavez, meanwhile, since her overtime heroics, has been able to drop back into her point-guard pocket — something Trae Young never managed during his lone season with the Sooner men — and play team basketball.
In two games since, she’s scored 18 and 14 points, dishing nine assists against two turnovers and though her 2-point shooting has been spotty, she’s remained just fine from 3, hitting 6 of 14.
Against A&M, Sahara Williams was perfect from beyond the arc in three tries, grabbed nine rebounds and dished five assists, proving it doesn’t have to be all Beers and Chavez but can also be her and Verhulst, or all of them.
Perhaps most important, the Sooners have ceased playing dead quarters.
Against Ole Miss, Kentucky and LSU, OU endured three quarters in which it scored 13 or fewer points and five in which it was outscored by at least six.
Beginning with South Carolina, there have been none and none, along with four 20-point quarters, two more 19-point quarters and four quarters (or overtimes) in which it’s scored at least seven more points than the opposition.
Against the Aggies, there was one stretch of seven of eight empty possessions, and it came right after the Sooners took their last 31-point lead, as Baranczyk emptied the bench.
The crowds have returned, too.
There was a sellout 10,890 for LSU, nearly 7,500 on a Thursday night for South Carolina and about 4,600 on a Thursday night for an A&M team that’s won just one conference game.
The next marquee weekend home-court opponent arrives Feb. 15, a Sunday, when No. 24 Alabama visits.
Get your tickets now.
The good old days for this program were very good, but increasingly old, a 13-season run from ’00 to ’13 that included nine Sweet 16s, three Final Fours, one national championship game, six regular-season conference crowns and four conference tournament crowns.
In the SEC, in an age of Kim Mulkey skippering LSU, Dawn Staley South Carolina and Vic Shaefer Texas, league honors will be hard to come by.
But Sweet 16s, Elite Eights and Final Fours?
Sure. Why not.
The Sooners appear to be rising.