Things aren’t fun for the Oklahoma men’s basketball team right now. Their season might have hit rock bottom today as they lost to TCU 79-52 on the road.
From the tip, TCU looked and played like the better team. Any signs of a hangover from their road upset over Kansas were nonexistent. OU turned the ball over on four of its first five possessions of the game, helping the Horned Frogs race out to an 11-0 lead. From that point, the avalanche just kept rolling downhill for Porter Moser’s team.
Big 12 Preseason Player of the Year Mike Miles was in a zone for TCU, finishing with 23 points on 6-of-9 shooting, including a perfect 10-of-10 mark from the charity stripe. C.J. Noland led the way for Oklahoma in points with 11 but still finished -24 for the game. Grant Sherfield, Oklahoma’s offensive engine, was bottled up. His five points on 2-of-11 shooting were just a footnote in this game.
TCU’s long and athletic defense swarmed Oklahoma all night and forced them to play way too fast. The Sooners don’t play the fastest but entered the game as the nation’s 20th-ranked field-goal percentage team. TCU’s 66th-ranked defense showed up in a big way to speed them up, and the Frogs did a good job contesting shots throughout the game.
A 44-27 halftime deficit didn’t get any better for the Sooners after the break. The Sooners were on the wrong end of another 11-0 run out of the locker room. Moser had seen enough and gave younger guys like Otega Oweh and Benny Schroder extended minutes in the blowout. The TCU lead ballooned to 31 points, and the rest is history.
Oklahoma’s starters combined for just 20 points. For a normally scrappy Sooners team that has played a lot of tough games, Tuesday’s performance felt like the wheels completely falling off on this Sooners’ season.
The 27-point defeat is OU’s worst loss since it’s a 77-47 loss to Baylor on Jan. 28, 2019.
Oklahoma will step away from the Big 12 grind to do battle with the SEC’s best team, the Alabama Crimson Tide, as part of the Big 12/SEC Challenge on Saturday afternoon. Tip-off between the Sooners and the Crimson Tide is slated for 1 p.m. at the Lloyd Noble Center.
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