Greetings from a Sooner

[adasooner]

In case you're wondering, the Panthers will not sneak up on anyone this year. I think most Sooner fans are aware that your team is good and we will have to be at our best to win on Thursday.

I must admit that I don't know a great deal about UM-W, except that I saw one of your games earlier in the year and I came away very impressed. OU typically has a problem with smaller teams that play fast, so this should be an interesting match up.

The key to OU's game, of course, is in the post with Taj Gray and Kevin Bookout. Terrell Everett is the heart and soul of our team because he does so many things well. Michael Neal is our three-point specialist, but he's a lot more than just a good shooter. The other guys are role players, but still very important to our success.

The Sooner's strength all year has been on the boards. We have held the rebounding edge (sometimes by a large margin) in every game we've played, with the exception of perhaps two or three, and we were still pretty good on the boards even in those games.

Frankly, the real question on Thursday is which Oklahoma team will show up? Will it be the team that beat Texas at home by ten or the one that lost to the Whorns by an embarrassing margin on their home floor? We have been inconsistent most of the season; losing some games we should have won in the final minutes, but winning a few close ones too. At one point, we had four straight one point victories. This team is very capable of beating anybody we play when our kids come to play with a lot of energy and determination.

To be honest, I don't know what to expect. I wouldn't be a good Sooner fan if I didn't believe OU will win. But right now I'd take a one point ugly victory and call it a good day.

I also wanted to invite you to the OUInsider's board where most of the Sooner basketball fans hang out. Just click on the "Lloyd Noble" forum and join in our discussions.


adasooner



oklahoma.scout.com/

[damasa]

I believe this game is going to be a battle.

IMO, it really depends on which team shows up for OU and for UWM. If OU is on, they are dangerous and the same thing can be said for UWM. I think it's going to come down to the battle inside (rebounds) and the tale of turnovers.

It appears that both teams mesh pretty well so it should make for a really good game. I hope the best of both teams show up Thursday so we can really throw down.

Good luck, I'll check your board out in a bit...

[milwsport]

Thanks for stopping by. BTW, it's UWM not UM-W

[dylanrocks]

Or simply Milwaukee. It avoids confusion. BTW, it doesn't appear as though your team is that much taller than ours.

[billhaverchuck]

Another Sooner here. Ada and I are both diehard OU fans who post everyday on the OUinsider board that he created the link for.

As for the OU UWM match-up it is not one I am very fond of, but when you are a team that has underachieved all year as we have done I guess that is what you get when you play your way into a 6 seed.

UWM should prove a tough challenge for our Sooners. I watched both of your tourney games last year and saw UWM on TV a couple times this year and you guys look every bit as good but you don't need me to tell you about your own team.

As for OU fans I noticed on another thread where someone was already talking about how many OU fans are giving up and expect to lose. Well you have to know when you have a big, high major program like we have at Oklahoma you are going to have alot of negative fans. Because of how good our football program is we have quite an interesting fan base at OU when it comes to basketball. Billy Tubbs had a 5+ year run at OU in the 80s where OU was about as good as any program in the nation. We lost to KU and Danny and the Miracles in the 88 championship after beating them twice that year. Many teams feel that was the most talented team to not win a title. Anyway, my point is after Billy wore out his welcome and Kelvin came to town in 94, there was such a drastic style change that many OU fans have never grown to appreciate Kelvin Sampson.

OU has been one of the top 10 programs in college basketball this decade. We have a top 10 winning % and have gone to the Elite 8 and Final 4 in 03 and 02. We won the Big 12 regular season last year and were a 3 seed but got ousted by Utah in the 2nd rd. We returned 3 key SR's in Everett, Bookout and Gray, but Lawrence McKenzie and Drew Lavender who were both starters most of the year transferred to Minnesota and Xavier respectively.

Even with those losses most of the media and OU fans felt what we had coming in to replace them would more than make up for it. OU was a pre-season top 5 team by most publications but this has been a frustrating season where it just seems like they have not been able to put it all together.

Michael Neal has been the one newcomer who was as advertised. He was a 2 time NJCAA All American at Lon Morris JR College in Texas and he was the Big 12 Pre-Season Newcomer of the Year and ended up winning the actual Pre-Season Big 12 NCOTY award and was 3rd team all conference in a conference with a ton of great guards. He might be the best 3 pt shooter in the nation not named JJ Redick. For the season he hit 86 3 pointers for 43%. However he battled some injuries up until after the first 2 conference games which he missed. In the 14 conference games he played he hit 54 3's at 49.5%. He is a deadly shooter who works really hard to get open and can put it on the floor and hit a pull up jumper too. Teams have really gone after him hard recently, Nebraska even played some box and one against him and held him to 6 pts. Most of the season teams focused on Bookout and Gray, but in the last 10 games or so as Neal has become the focal point of the offense, more teams have face guarded him, switched on screens, and thrown about every junk defense you can come up with because he is OU's only lethal 3 pt shooter. If only McKenzie had stayed because he was the 2nd best 3 pt shooter in the Big 12 last year.

Anyway, I would imagine UWM will continue a similar pattern defensively because it seems to have worked for teams recently.

However that can lead a team to being susceptible to Gray and or Bookout having big games. Taj Gray was the pre-season Big 12 POY, but ended up only being 2nd team All Big 12 after being 1st team last year as a JR. He is very athletic for a college big man, runs the floor well and can finish with authority. However he also can struggle in the paint against big bodies and tends to try and do too much sometimes and can turn the ball over. He actually was better last year IMO, he was inconsistent but had more big games. When we played Duke last year he tore up Sheldon Williams so much that Coach K put the undersized Reggie Love on him and Love actually stopped him. So as you see Taj can be a bit of an enigma.

With Bookout he has great touch around the basket but has some nagging injuries that have hampered him. How he plays usually depends on how many touches he gets.

We are all hoping our 3 seniors will wake up and play up to expectations, but it remains to be seen. OU fans are frustrated right now because of the pre-season hype and not living up to it, but we would not be the first underachieving experienced team to get hot in the tournament so that gives us hope.

Terrell Everett is who makes us go. If you can slow him down and force him to try and do too much you will win. If he plays smart he is awesome and can go for 15-20 pts, 10+assists and several steals, but if he gets rattled he starts trying to do too much and will have 5-7 turnovers. If he plays like he is capable of and Bookout and Gray are tough inside, and Neal is getting open hitting 3's and we get some contributions from Godbold, Carter, Johnson and Griffin this team can put together a string of wins. Problem is, those things have not all come together very often this year. One guy has a good game then the next game it is someone else, but very rarely have they all contributed positively.

Anyway that is pretty much the state of this OU team. Sorry for the long post but I figured someone might want a good in depth look at the Sooners.

[milwsport]

Thanks for the info. This should be a very interesting matchup.

[brewtownbrian]

Yes, great info on a team I'm not that familiar with.

[Spike1057]

Look no disrespect to my fellow horizon league fans but lets be real in this situation. Last year was something special. You had a great score in ed which drew alot of attention away from guys like Boo Davis who was able to knock down huge shots. With that said with the loss of one of the best coaches in DI (god it hurts to say that) your team is not the same. You may have seen UWM play on tv last year, but its a new team with a new system.
UWM is good dont get me wrong, but they are not as strong as OU, UWM needs to knock down their outside shots against this team and hope that Tucker will actually be able to play more then 30 minutes, without being taken out by the refs. Lets face it UWM does not like to bang down low, they can but thats not their style of game, your jump shooters. OU is a team that will post and bang which means their going to draw the fouls. I think UWM will keep it close and unfortunately fall down the stretch. Its not that I hope I'm wrong I mean I love watching you guys lose, but as far as representing the conference it would be nice to see another upset this year. I just dont see it happening this year, great experience from last year but not enough shooters on this UWM team to make it happen.

[Deleted]

Spike,
remember, you only have to be a better team for forty minutes.

[brewtownbrian]

spike1057 said:

Look no disrespect to my fellow horizon league fans but lets be real in this situation. Last year was something special. You had a great score in ed which drew alot of attention away from guys like Boo Davis who was able to knock down huge shots. With that said with the loss of one of the best coaches in DI (god it hurts to say that) your team is not the same. You may have seen UWM play on tv last year, but its a new team with a new system.
UWM is good dont get me wrong, but they are not as strong as OU, UWM needs to knock down their outside shots against this team and hope that Tucker will actually be able to play more then 30 minutes, without being taken out by the refs. Lets face it UWM does not like to bang down low, they can but thats not their style of game, your jump shooters. OU is a team that will post and bang which means their going to draw the fouls. I think UWM will keep it close and unfortunately fall down the stretch. Its not that I hope I'm wrong I mean I love watching you guys lose, but as far as representing the conference it would be nice to see another upset this year. I just dont see it happening this year, great experience from last year but not enough shooters on this UWM team to make it happen.

Grammar, punctuation and spelling errors aside...I tend to agree with Spike from Normal, IL.

There aren't too many "Cinderella" teams who pull off the miracle 2 years in a row. That's just the reality of it.

On the other hand, I've watched this team all season. I've been to every home game and a few road games and have seen countless situations where the seniors on this team bend to the point that it's painful to be a fan, but they rarely break.

That is a big difference from the team last year. BP might have been the x-factor last season...the 7 seniors are the x-factor this season!

[dylanrocks]

Spike, do you mean to suggest that A.T., Joah, J-Mac and Big D are better jump-shooters than they are interior players? I don't think this is a perimeter-oriented team at all, as we hit only four threes in the Horizon League title game (one by Nick Hansen) and still managed to score 87 points and win by 16.

[milwsport]

I agree with Dylan. It's hard to stop Joah inside, hard to keep Tigert from scoring when his shot is on too. And while OU may have beef, we have quickness. Look at the BU game. How many times did we catch them flat footed with our cutters.

It's going to be a very interesting match up.

[billhaverchuck]

Thanks guys.

I don't think many UWM fans feel they are better than OU. I don't think many people are under the assumption that UWM could go 11-5 in the Big 12, heck our fans were disappointed with doing that because we were 12-4 last year and had so much back. But for one night against a team like OU that has some exploitable weaknesses, anything can happen. UWM has a very good mid major program and OU is a team that has played in alot of close games this year. I expect it to be a good game, hopefully my Sooners play up to their abilities so it will not be too good of a game,

[dylanrocks]

One day in the not-too-distant future perhaps Milwaukee will simply be known as a very good program.

[TBone]

Spike is right to an extent. We caught fire last year, but we're not a team of jumpshooters as mentioned by dylanrocks.

In fact, Jeter mentioned early and often that a major goal of the offense is to go inside and get to the line. When we're able to do that, and HIT free throws, we usually do pretty well.

I think OU is the better squad in all honesty, but it's a squad I think we can win against on occasion. Remember, we're coming off of perhaps our best two-game stretch of the season (with exception to Montana / Wyoming on the road) whereas OU's lost two straight.

T