Sooners going nowhere playing like this
Getting manhandled by Alabama puts the recent past right back on the table
Uh, oh.
This is not good.
Of all the nightmare games Oklahoma might have played at Alabama Saturday, this was certainly one of them.
The Crimson Tide’s 107-79 victory was a study in OU’s lack of mental toughness, lack of physical toughness, lack of leadership and, perhaps, Sooner fans must hope, lack of familiarity with the venue and the moment, for the contest was OU’s first this season on an opponent’s home floor and it’s first ever Southeastern Conference game.
Not to mention Alabama’s really good, too.
Though OU (13-1, 0-1 SEC) entered unbeaten and ranked No. 13, Alabama (12-2, 1-0) entered ranked No. 5 with wins over then-No. 25 Illinois, then-No. 6 Houston and then-No. 20 North Carolina, quite possibly three better squads than anybody the Sooners had yet met.
Still, there was no excuse for what happened inside Coleman Coliseum, where OU was practically never in it.
The Sooners scored the first basket, the Tide the next two and led the rest of the way.
By the time 8:16 remained in the first half, Alabama led 27-16 and OU was never within 10 points again.
Alabama led by 19 points at the half and though OU was briefly within 17 afterward, the spread was never less than 20 over the final 9:48 even as OU scored 26 points over the final 9:48, which sounds impossible as I type it, but isn’t considering Alabama scored 33 over the same span.
It would be a painstaking stat to put together and I don’t have the time, but it appeared over the skirmish’s first 30 minutes the number Tide possessions that included no points, no Sooner foul and no offensive rebound may have been less than five and if you watched it you may well have been thinking the same thing.
At halftime, Alabama led 10 to 5 on the offensive glass.
By the second half’s first media timeout, it was threatening to pull down more offensive boards (17) than OU had boards (18), period. By the third second-half media stoppage, with 7:01 remaining, the deed was done, Alabama standing on 22 offensive rebounds and OU on 22 of any type.
And here’s a stat that may not tell the story many days but surely helped tell it Saturday: the Tide finished with nine dunks and the Sooners only three.
Translation: OU got pushed around and could not begin to impose itself until long after the game was decided and only then very briefly.
The most consecutive points the Sooners managed was six, momentarily cutting the Tide advantage from 84-57 to 84-63 with 6:33 remaining.
If blame must be assigned, hand it to the players. Should OU turn in any more efforts like this, put it on coach Porter Moser and fear another free fall from grace, like the ones endured in 2022 and 2024, leaving the Sooners out of the NCAA tourney after very promising starts.
Jeremiah Fears finished with 16 points, but the game was lost by the time he found his rhythm, all but one of those points coming after the half.
Jalon Moore was hardly the worst pre-intermission Sooner but six points and three rebounds is not senior leadership stuff when your team’s getting out-rebounded 28 to 17.
The only Sooner who played well early was post Sam Godwin, who scored 11 of his 15 points and grabbed four of his five rebounds before the half, but it’s never a good sign when Godwin’s OU’s best player. It’s when he’s the third or fourth best player and playing well the Sooners are really dangerous.
It’s only one loss but it’s maddening just the same.
Is there leadership on this team or are things only good when they’re good?
Is OU going to be hammered on the boards the whole conference season long because Moore and Godwin aren’t physical forces enough to hold down the fort in the defensive paint?
The only saving grace was OU’s scoring 50 second-half points, which by no means lets it off the hook for allowing 59 or for allowing the 12 offensive rebounds that fueled those 59.
But at least it lets the Sooners come home knowing they can still put the ball in the basket, which will be a good thing to know when No. 13 Texas A&M walks into Lloyd Noble Center for an 8 p.m. Wednesday tip.
Despite the points, it remained an utterly awful showing. Not being competitive, after all, is still not being competitive and OU wasn’t close.
Falling to the nation’s No. 5 team on the road is no sin, but how the Sooners did it was blasphemous.
As a stand alone, no biggie.
As a trend, this team’s going nowhere again.
Godwin has been very good and if paired with a true big man would make a dynamic duo. But, alas, no true big man. Just a bunch of guards getting pushed around by bigger, talented, players. And it's not just the rebounding that stinks, OU gets out hustled on 70% of loose balls too. The game was so terrible that finding bright spots is hard. All OU fans can do is hope that this embarrassment will serve as an eye-opener and these players will learn something from it. Maybe.