#24 OU vs #11 KU Big12 Tourney 530CST on ESPN

[OUSKINS]

Program objectives....

Finish top 4 in the league
Competitive for regular season crown
Competitive for conference tournament crown
Defeat rivals
Make NCAA tournament
Make run in ncaa tournament

If those are the goals, we are failing miserably at the first three. We aren’t even coming close to any of them.

On the rivals, I guess we do alright there. Making the tourney also hasn’t been an issue. Making a “run” in tourney? I guess that depends on perspective, but we are probably doing so-so in that department.

 

[Sooner04]

Five minutes to go. Down five after being down as many as 23. Here we go:

Reaves miss, Reaves rebound, Reaves miss

Reaves miss, Harkless tip-in

Reaves miss

Reaves turnover

Reaves 1-2 from FT line

Reaves miss

Reaves turnover

Reaves miss

Reaves lay-up

Reaves miss FT


THAT is Hero ball. The team worked their butts off to get back into this game. One guy stymied it all by himself. How on Earth did it ever get to this point? He's not Allen Iverson.

 

[Sooner04]

Program objectives....

Finish top 4 in the league
Competitive for regular season crown
Competitive for conference tournament crown
Defeat rivals
Make NCAA tournament
Make run in ncaa tournament

Those have been our benchmarks as long as I've been alive, and I'll be 39 in June.

 

[thebigabd]

Those have been our benchmarks as long as I've been alive, and I'll be 39 in June.

I just turned 37.... And those are the objectives as long as I've been following OU

 

[Crimson&Cream14]

Program objectives....

Finish top 4 in the league
Competitive for regular season crown
Competitive for conference tournament crown
Defeat rivals
Make NCAA tournament
Make run in ncaa tournament

- Nope
- LOL no
- Nope
- Luckily Texas was missing key people 1st time around. 1/4. Yuck.
- Yay
- TBD but losing 5 out of 6 going in doesn't bode well.

 

[Stikboy]

- Nope
- LOL no
- Nope
- Luckily Texas was missing key people 1st time around. 1/4. Yuck.
- Yay
- TBD but losing 5 out of 6 going in doesn't bode well.

Yuck is right. Is this 5 years of it now? Sheesh

 

[steverocks35]

Five minutes to go. Down five after being down as many as 23. Here we go:

Reaves miss, Reaves rebound, Reaves miss

Reaves miss, Harkless tip-in

Reaves miss

Reaves turnover

Reaves 1-2 from FT line

Reaves miss

Reaves turnover

Reaves miss

Reaves lay-up

Reaves miss FT


THAT is Hero ball. The team worked their butts off to get back into this game. One guy stymied it all by himself. How on Earth did it ever get to this point? He's not Allen Iverson.

And the other team knows exactly what’s coming. If only there were some sort of “head coach” who could rein him in. Oh well.

 

[WichitaSooner]

K. I’ll own it.

Lon is paid top 15 salary for top 50 results. Bad investment. All we have to do is finish top 7 in a 10 team league to make the tourney. We can get that with a first time coach. We’d be better off hiring a first time coach at a discount and using the difference to fund other programs. The basketball program isn’t trying to win a championship, so fund programs that do attempt to win championships.

This is where you lose credibility even though there are some valid points in some of your posts. Top 50 results? I’d challenge you to name 25 programs with better results since he has been here. You would have to manipulate it like crazy to even come close. Unless you want to count coaches like Weber who have won a league title but also been awful in multiple years, or guys who get hot for a couple years then fall off the map. You have to be in the top 35ish to make the tourney in any year. To do that EVERY year, you are further narrowing the field.

But I guess a couple of our posters, unlike the entirety of the college basketball world, don’t care about making the tournament as much as other criteria that they have decided on themselves.

 

[Soonerinkc]

Lon Kruger - #14 on salary


Tied for 7th (with 2 others) for most losses

6 teams and his winning %/total games
Tx Rio .468 111
ksu .638 127
florida .565 184
illionois .628 129
unlv .694 232
OKLAHOMA .606 320
(less because of today's loss)

AP FINAL ranking 3/10 yrs...#21/#13/#7 THAT is not consistently in the top 25

Also has coached the most games at OU and has his 2nd worse out of 5 schools winning %

Tell me he's worth it....

 

[Soonerinkc]

He has provided top 25 results at worst since he’s come here. Also this is 1 of 2 programs that makes money (maybe softball pays for itself now but doubt it) but it doesn’t make enough cuz of the fans. It takes the fanbase to fund a championship. Until the fans pony up and show up we won’t ever win a natty.

3 of the 10 yrs. We'll see about this yr...FINAL ranking.

I do agree fans need to be there...but if the school is ok with mediocracy then it'll never change.

 

[stormspencer]

Five minutes to go. Down five after being down as many as 23. Here we go:

Reaves miss, Reaves rebound, Reaves miss

Reaves miss, Harkless tip-in

Reaves miss

Reaves turnover

Reaves 1-2 from FT line

Reaves miss

Reaves turnover

Reaves miss

Reaves lay-up

Reaves miss FT


THAT is Hero ball. The team worked their butts off to get back into this game. One guy stymied it all by himself. How on Earth did it ever get to this point? He's not Allen Iverson.

Oh my lord....that is a really bad final stretch of minutes. And yes OU tends to fall in love with this Reaves iso-ball in the waning minutes far too often....when it wasn't what got them back into the game. Ball movement, cutting and inside/out was the best offense tonight. That's on Lon for either continually drawing that up or not reigning him in. I can understand why a player would ponder a transfer if Reaves comes back.

 

[TINY]

3 of the 10 yrs. We'll see about this yr...FINAL ranking.

I do agree fans need to be there...but if the school is ok with mediocracy then it'll never change.

That’s not how I see it. How has ou’s program performed relative to all other programs over Lon’s time at ou? How many other programs have been to the tourney almost every season? Final 4/sweet 16 with a winning record in the ncaa tournament. We have done well in the non conference, too. Had to in order to offset his poor conference record. That said, big12 has arguably been the toughest conference over that span. I don’t believe Lon will get us a natty but he runs a clean program and is very consistent. It is, what it is.

 

[WichitaSooner]

Oh my lord....that is a really bad final stretch of minutes. And yes OU tends to fall in love with this Reaves iso-ball in the waning minutes far too often....when it wasn't what got them back into the game. Ball movement, cutting and inside/out was the best offense tonight. That's on Lon for either continually drawing that up or not reigning him in. I can understand why a player would ponder a transfer if Reaves comes back.

There is no chance Reaves comes back. Zero.

 

[BCSooners]

Wash rinse repeat. Same ole crap. Same ole mediocrity. But we’re making the ncaa tournament! Ahh! Ahh! Ahh!

Making the tourney is mediocrity?

 

[Stikboy]

Making the tourney is mediocrity?

In light of the team’s performance, and everything surrounding the team’s product, how they play and their current nosedive ... does it not get the least bit embarrassing repeating this crap over and over?

Sometimes I have to look up at the banner at the top of the page and make sure I’m not on the Austin Peay board. SMH

 

[steverocks35]

While I was, rightfully, dishing out criticism to Austin Reaves last night, I forgot to mention Umoja Gibson. He got a goose egg for the team last night. When the team was rolling in January he was a star and now he's regressed to the mean at the worst possible time. He's scrappy but undersized and if he's not making shots he's not really much of an asset.

 

[WTSooner]

It's been a weird season. I thought Gibson would be better. His numbers aren't terrible, but I thought he'd be a top 2 scorer on the team pretty easily. His shooting (outside of from 3) has been terrible. Harmon took a bigger jump than I was expecting in year 2. Reaves has the counting stats, obviously, but his offense has been terribly inefficient. Harkless is super raw on offense, but looks a lot like Marcus Smart in the rest of his game. And Williams, I expected way more from him as well.

Some nights its the offense, and some nights its the defense. This team has shown they can win games in a variety of ways, but they've also shown that they can lose in a variety of ways.

 

[BoulderSooner]

Reaves has the counting stats, obviously, but his offense has been terribly inefficient.

this is a factually incorrect statement

 

[BoulderSooner]

reaves has the second best guard PER in the Big 12 ..

 

[WichitaSooner]

this is a factually incorrect statement

Darn you and your facts!!

This will be another statement that the factually wrong poster won’t bother to acknowledge.