GAME 16 - #16 OKLAHOMA (13-2) vs GEORGIA (13-2) 5pm CST on ESPN2

[WichitaSooner]

This is a very different team, athletically, with JN and JJ. They were supposed to be starters. You can’t fault Moser for the injuries. Miles and Elvis should be coming off the bench. Goodine should only be playing if he has a good shooting night. Could Moser scheme better. Most likely. But after watching the first three games it’s just a repeat of 2022-2023 when OU was the least athletic team in the conference.

The injury excuse should not be used to save Moser’s job, but I think we would be kidding ourselves if we think it hasn’t made a difference in conference play.

I don’t know, Jones played at a much lower level than Elvis and didn’t exactly put up huge numbers. I don’t think I’ve read or heard anyone who has reported on him say that he is a plus athlete. JN sounds like a good athlete, but how would he adjust from JUCO to playing in the best league in the country, and playing for an anal coach who doesn’t exactly have a history of giving guys a long leash?

I’m curious to see if Moser continues to yank Fears and drastically cut his minutes if he makes a couple mistakes. On the one hand, I like holding guys accountable and trying to go with the guys playing well. On the other hand, he played Goodine 31 minutes and Fears 22. Goodine shot like crap, isn’t a ball handler, and is a below average defender. Does leaving him in for 31 minutes help us more than playing our most talented player who has a far higher ceiling and who needs to learn to play through mistakes? I always think back to how Lon kept running Cousins out there during a dreadful freshman year. It drove me crazy at times because it definitely hurt us in certain situations. But he knew how important he was going to be for the team going forward. We won’t win without Fears being good. I never viewed him as a top 5 pick, but he is clearly better than anyone we have had since Reaves. Benching him for 9 minutes because he got lost on defense and gave up an open three, while continuing to play guys like Sam and Luke as they get abused time and again is quite the choice.

And it makes me sick that Wague sat the final several minutes. God I wish we had actual baseball media covering this team. If a coach at most P4 schools had made that dumb a decision, he would be asked about his reasoning. Instead, all the writers just talked about how well Wague played without wondering why the hell Loser went back to Sam … and the game went from a one-score game to a 10-point loss