Sooner04
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DISCLAIMER: These thoughts are not from a professional. They are from an unabashed Sooner BBall fanatic whose glasses are tinted heavily crimson. I’m not a coach, I’m not an analyst, I’m just a fan who used to write and misses the task. My knowledge of the X’s and O’s of the sport is tenuous at best. My predictions often prove folly. I once fell hard for Ray Willis. But I do love my Sooners hoopsters, often much too much. Feel free to critique but, please, be gentle.
There was nothing fishy about our 7-1 record coming into tonight. Forget briefly that we struggled against Idaho State (and I give you permission now to do so) and you’ll see that we were a team that really won our wins and really lost our losses. We won big and we lost big, and there really hadn’t been any room for interpretation on the judge’s scorecards.
But then tonight happened. After a sluggish start to the game we took the lead and kept Houston at elbow’s length for the remainder of the stanza, and it appeared we were poised to come out in the second half and finish what we started. Problem was we played the worst six minutes of our young season (worse than any stretch in that clunker against Saint Louis) and found ourselves down nine in a skosh. Fifteen minutes to go and the truck is sliding on the ice, what do we do? Against the Billikens we had no answer, but tonight we had Steven Pledger.
Pledger’s monster night, and mainly his assertiveness in the face of the deficit, completely saved our butts. Whereas the rest of the team was tentative, Steven wanted the ball and he let it fly at a moment’s notice. If the long ball wasn’t there, or if Houston came out to close, he took it to the hole. In the past, he was a gunner; but now he contributes on both ends, and he had several key defensive rebounds in the closing minutes. The cool thing about him taking charge is that others fed off the bump: Fitzgerald worked hard down low, Clark made big plays on the wing, and even Tyler Neal hit a crucial runner.
We’re not an overly talented bunch. We’re not going to wow you with athleticism dripping from every pore of our being. But what we are is a pretty solid team. We’re darn good at finding the man with the touch and continually getting him the basketball. It may be Osby, it may be Clark, it could be Fitzgerald, and tonight it was Pledger. But you can hang your hat on the fact that we’ll play good, solid team basketball. That very fact will win us a lot of games, because basketball fundamentals continue to erode across the landscape.
And we’ve got Lon Kruger. All hail Lon. Good grief, with that guy it feels like we can climb the tallest mountain. March 2011 seems like 100 years ago. It’s easy to win games when you feel like things are rolling, but it’s a whole other to pull one out of the fire when they are complete toss-ups. This was the first time we overcame adversity and secured a W. Man, it feels good.
SCORING BREAKDOWN:
1st: 17 [You can laugh at my behavior,]
2nd: 23 [That'll never bother me.]
3rd: 15 [Say the Devil is my savior,]
4th: 24 [But I don't pay no heed.]
LEADING SCORERS:
Steven Pledger: 31
Cameron Clark: 14
Andrew Fitzgerald: 10
Sam Grooms: 10
LEADING REBOUNDERS:
Steven Pledger: 10
Romero Osby: 10
Tyler Neal: 6
Andrew Fitzgerald: 6
PLUSES:
1. Steven Pledger: Maybe it’s coaching, I just don’t know. Several times this year I’ve made mention of how efficient a game player X played on any given night. I obviously had no grasp for what is truly efficient, at least until tonight. 31 points on only 13 shots, 7-7 from the free-throw line, and 10 rebounds, four of which were offensive. I don’t see any way it gets any better than that. I don’t know how you describe a game that good; it was more than amazing. It was more than fantastic.
2. Sam Grooms: He is the steadying force. The guiding light to carry you through the choppy seas, he is utterly dependable. Eight assists and a big, fat, ZERO turnovers. Quannas-esque. Seriously!
3. Andrew Fitzgerald: Drew had several good looks tonight, and not many of them fell, but he kept on plugging. He’s obviously a very skilled offensive player, and I like that he didn’t get down when every good jumper he took found new ways to rattle out of the hoop. In the past, a tough shooting night would bleed into other areas of his game and he’d be little more than a carbon blob, but now he contributes elsewhere, as evidenced by six rebounds, a pair of assists and a steal. It’s safe to say that both he and Pledger have made that big jump in the off-season between their sophomore and junior years.
4. Tyler Neal: More solid minutes off the bench. Nine points, six rebounds, two steals and an assist, and it’s easy to see him becoming a really solid contributor.
5. Tony Snell: Dude for New Mexico. Poked in the eye and a nasal canal flush with blood. Guy looked like he’d gone 12 rounds with Hagler. Sheesh.
6. Ranger: Ranger was my parent’s shih-tzu, and he passed away earlier this week at the age of 16. He was a ball of fur with a bad attitude who could barely trace the smell emitted from his own butt, but I loved him. He’d been in my family for more than half of my life, and I will miss him a lot.
MINUSES:
1. Calvin Newell: Enjoy hurricane season in Orlando.
2. Interior Depth: We’re asking an awful lot of Romero and Andrew down there. C. J. didn’t provide us with much, and Arent was bolted to the bench. Honore’s five minutes were decent, but we’re going to need much more than that VERY soon.
3. The 4th Foul on Alandise Harris: Good grief, what a terrible call.
4. Second Half Rebounding: Once we tied it back up I thought our inability to consistently grab rebounds was the main factor Houston stayed so close. I thought it was our worst loose ball game of the year.
5. Attendance: Back when the All-College was a tournament, you could expect the field to be OU and three pitiful to mediocre other teams. I recall us losing to Lon Kruger’s Florida squad in December of 1995. But the other thing I remember is there’d be about 7,500-8,000 at the Myriad for those games. I don’t see how much longer the All-Sports Association can continue to foot the bill for the CHK Center when they only sell 5,000 tickets.
We’ve won games when we’ve drilled teams. Check! We lost a game when we had nothing and got our butts kicked. Check! Add another to the list: overcoming a second-half deficit and making big plays down the stretch in a tight game. CHECK! We’ll play lots more games like this, and Kruger said it best in the post-game interview with Toby when he alluded to the fact that the best wins are those in which you learn a lot. Hopefully we learn that it takes 40 minutes to be great, and it takes a mere five minutes to turn a nice cushion into a big deficit.
The big games are coming. We’re getting better. Enjoy this win!
Onward!
Thank you for your time.
There was nothing fishy about our 7-1 record coming into tonight. Forget briefly that we struggled against Idaho State (and I give you permission now to do so) and you’ll see that we were a team that really won our wins and really lost our losses. We won big and we lost big, and there really hadn’t been any room for interpretation on the judge’s scorecards.
But then tonight happened. After a sluggish start to the game we took the lead and kept Houston at elbow’s length for the remainder of the stanza, and it appeared we were poised to come out in the second half and finish what we started. Problem was we played the worst six minutes of our young season (worse than any stretch in that clunker against Saint Louis) and found ourselves down nine in a skosh. Fifteen minutes to go and the truck is sliding on the ice, what do we do? Against the Billikens we had no answer, but tonight we had Steven Pledger.
Pledger’s monster night, and mainly his assertiveness in the face of the deficit, completely saved our butts. Whereas the rest of the team was tentative, Steven wanted the ball and he let it fly at a moment’s notice. If the long ball wasn’t there, or if Houston came out to close, he took it to the hole. In the past, he was a gunner; but now he contributes on both ends, and he had several key defensive rebounds in the closing minutes. The cool thing about him taking charge is that others fed off the bump: Fitzgerald worked hard down low, Clark made big plays on the wing, and even Tyler Neal hit a crucial runner.
We’re not an overly talented bunch. We’re not going to wow you with athleticism dripping from every pore of our being. But what we are is a pretty solid team. We’re darn good at finding the man with the touch and continually getting him the basketball. It may be Osby, it may be Clark, it could be Fitzgerald, and tonight it was Pledger. But you can hang your hat on the fact that we’ll play good, solid team basketball. That very fact will win us a lot of games, because basketball fundamentals continue to erode across the landscape.
And we’ve got Lon Kruger. All hail Lon. Good grief, with that guy it feels like we can climb the tallest mountain. March 2011 seems like 100 years ago. It’s easy to win games when you feel like things are rolling, but it’s a whole other to pull one out of the fire when they are complete toss-ups. This was the first time we overcame adversity and secured a W. Man, it feels good.
SCORING BREAKDOWN:
1st: 17 [You can laugh at my behavior,]
2nd: 23 [That'll never bother me.]
3rd: 15 [Say the Devil is my savior,]
4th: 24 [But I don't pay no heed.]
LEADING SCORERS:
Steven Pledger: 31
Cameron Clark: 14
Andrew Fitzgerald: 10
Sam Grooms: 10
LEADING REBOUNDERS:
Steven Pledger: 10
Romero Osby: 10
Tyler Neal: 6
Andrew Fitzgerald: 6
PLUSES:
1. Steven Pledger: Maybe it’s coaching, I just don’t know. Several times this year I’ve made mention of how efficient a game player X played on any given night. I obviously had no grasp for what is truly efficient, at least until tonight. 31 points on only 13 shots, 7-7 from the free-throw line, and 10 rebounds, four of which were offensive. I don’t see any way it gets any better than that. I don’t know how you describe a game that good; it was more than amazing. It was more than fantastic.
2. Sam Grooms: He is the steadying force. The guiding light to carry you through the choppy seas, he is utterly dependable. Eight assists and a big, fat, ZERO turnovers. Quannas-esque. Seriously!
3. Andrew Fitzgerald: Drew had several good looks tonight, and not many of them fell, but he kept on plugging. He’s obviously a very skilled offensive player, and I like that he didn’t get down when every good jumper he took found new ways to rattle out of the hoop. In the past, a tough shooting night would bleed into other areas of his game and he’d be little more than a carbon blob, but now he contributes elsewhere, as evidenced by six rebounds, a pair of assists and a steal. It’s safe to say that both he and Pledger have made that big jump in the off-season between their sophomore and junior years.
4. Tyler Neal: More solid minutes off the bench. Nine points, six rebounds, two steals and an assist, and it’s easy to see him becoming a really solid contributor.
5. Tony Snell: Dude for New Mexico. Poked in the eye and a nasal canal flush with blood. Guy looked like he’d gone 12 rounds with Hagler. Sheesh.
6. Ranger: Ranger was my parent’s shih-tzu, and he passed away earlier this week at the age of 16. He was a ball of fur with a bad attitude who could barely trace the smell emitted from his own butt, but I loved him. He’d been in my family for more than half of my life, and I will miss him a lot.
MINUSES:
1. Calvin Newell: Enjoy hurricane season in Orlando.
2. Interior Depth: We’re asking an awful lot of Romero and Andrew down there. C. J. didn’t provide us with much, and Arent was bolted to the bench. Honore’s five minutes were decent, but we’re going to need much more than that VERY soon.
3. The 4th Foul on Alandise Harris: Good grief, what a terrible call.
4. Second Half Rebounding: Once we tied it back up I thought our inability to consistently grab rebounds was the main factor Houston stayed so close. I thought it was our worst loose ball game of the year.
5. Attendance: Back when the All-College was a tournament, you could expect the field to be OU and three pitiful to mediocre other teams. I recall us losing to Lon Kruger’s Florida squad in December of 1995. But the other thing I remember is there’d be about 7,500-8,000 at the Myriad for those games. I don’t see how much longer the All-Sports Association can continue to foot the bill for the CHK Center when they only sell 5,000 tickets.
We’ve won games when we’ve drilled teams. Check! We lost a game when we had nothing and got our butts kicked. Check! Add another to the list: overcoming a second-half deficit and making big plays down the stretch in a tight game. CHECK! We’ll play lots more games like this, and Kruger said it best in the post-game interview with Toby when he alluded to the fact that the best wins are those in which you learn a lot. Hopefully we learn that it takes 40 minutes to be great, and it takes a mere five minutes to turn a nice cushion into a big deficit.
The big games are coming. We’re getting better. Enjoy this win!
Onward!
Thank you for your time.
