"The Sooners are the perfect oddball Final Four team"

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OUHoops

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Moneybrackets: Win Your Pool by Avoiding These 10 Mistakes: http://grantland.com/the-triangle/moneybrackets-win-your-pool-by-avoiding-these-10-mistakes/


6. Don’t Deviate From the “Three 1-Seeds, One Oddball” Final Four Strategy

How often do at least two no. 1 seeds reach the Final Four? As it turns out, about half the time. Since ’85, there have been 15 years where two no. 1 seeds or more reach the Final Four, and 14 years where one or fewer do so. So the question we have to ask ourselves is: How good are this year’s no. 1 seeds relative to the rest of the field?

For me, the answer is “very good.” I’m a big believer in Virginia, and you already know my feelings on Wichita State. Then there’s Florida, the consensus top team in the country. I believe there’s a good chance all three will make the Final Four, and a very good chance they’ll at least reach the final weekend. By picking all of them, you maximize your chances at getting the points from two, which may be good enough by itself to win your pool.

But because we’re not robots, and because there has been just one season when all four no. 1 seeds made the Final Four, we need an oddball region. And the oddest region is also the weakest: the West. Arizona is missing its best player in Brandon Ashley. The 2-seed Wisconsin Badgers will lose a close, low-scoring game like they do every year. We already know to ignore Creighton at no. 3 and San Diego State at no. 4 (Mountain West), and Baylor at no. 6 has one of the worst game coaches in the country in Scott Drew. All of which leaves …

Oklahoma. This is your oddball. Solid 12-6 performance in a tough Big 12, great offensive metrics, OK on defense, and has experience beating Iowa State, Oklahoma State, Baylor, Kansas State, and Texas … all tournament teams. To me, the Sooners are the perfect oddball Final Four team.
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Was getting ready to post this, but you beat me to it and you know what....as crazy as it sounds....he does bring up some very good points as to why this OU team could reach Arlington. Good guard play and great coaching is a great combo to have in March so I say f it.....Final 4 or bust!!!!!!!! :woot
 
Shhh....let's stay in underdog mode. I feel much safer there.

Though -- if ISU or OU get hot from downtown, either team could make a deep run. There are SO MANY shooters on the floor, it's hard to keep contain for an entire game.
 
A team with our offensive firepower can win on any given night, even against a vastly superior taem, if we just get hot. I think our potential tournament outcomes have more variance then just about anyone. We could get hot and scorch our way to the final four. We could shoot 35% and get bounced by North Dakota State.


Reminds me a lot of Baylor in football the last few years under Briles. They could come out and execute perfectly and score 50 on any team in the country. Or they could have an off night and get destroyed.
 
sperry said:
Reminds me a lot of Baylor in football the last few years under Briles. They could come out and execute perfectly and score 50 on any team in the country. Or they could have an off night and get destroyed.
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Except we're not likely to get destroyed by anyone. We've found a way to be competitive in every game we've played, even the two in which we came out utterly flat in the first half and could easily have been blown out.
 
skyvue said:
Except we're not likely to get destroyed by anyone. We've found a way to be competitive in every game we've played, even the two in which we came out utterly flat in the first half and could easily have been blown out.
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I do love the heart we play with, and that we fought back in those games. It is a testament to the heart of our players. But those games were blowouts for most of teh night because we came out shooting so bad and playing so flat, and as a result the leads proved to be insurmountable.


The explosive offense we run can put us in a really bad spot if we aren't executing. It can also let us blwo teams out, and can get us big leads evne against teams vastly superior to us. With our current undersized group, I think it's the perfect system and it's why we are so much better than I thought we would be this year.
 
sperry said:
I do love the heart we play with, and that we fought back in those games. It is a testament to the heart of our players. But those games were blowouts for most of teh night because we came out shooting so bad and playing so flat, and as a result the leads proved to be insurmountable.


The explosive offense we run can put us in a really bad spot if we aren't executing. It can also let us blwo teams out, and can get us big leads evne against teams vastly superior to us. With our current undersized group, I think it's the perfect system and it's why we are so much better than I thought we would be this year.
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The only two games that seem to fit the criteria you're mentioning are Baylor and Texas Tech. Those are the only two games where we got down big early and clawed our way back to come up short.
 
If we did make it to the round of 16 and we meet up with Arizona they are a really, really bad matchup for us. I know we own them but it's nothing I'm looking forward to.
 
JBaker said:
The only two games that seem to fit the criteria you're mentioning are Baylor and Texas Tech. Those are the only two games where we got down big early and clawed our way back to come up short.
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Those are the two that I'm talking about.
 
sperry said:
those games were blowouts for most of teh night because we came out shooting so bad and playing so flat, and as a result the leads proved to be insurmountable.
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Trailing by 4 points with two or three minutes to play and by six with, what, five minutes to play (I'm relying entirely on memory here) is a competitive game. I don't care what happened in the early going -- we made those games competitive and with a play or two going a different way, we could have won them, despite laying a rotten egg in the first half of each.
 
Soonerlover12 said:
Arizona is not a great scoring team
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They do have 6'11" big men that would be tough to contain for our smaller team. We need to just beat NDSU, they're really confident and talking smack on their board right now. They are the "sexy" trendy upset pick and I hope our boys realize that and gets 'em fired up!
 
Arizona beat Duke on a neutral court and Michigan and SDSU away. That is wins away from home against a 2, 3 and 4 seed. Who else has done that?
 
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