3 biggest factors heading into Thursday

[brewtownbrian]

Now that we've had some kind Sooner fan's join the board and share their thoughts/opinions/feelings on their team, I was just hoping that we could have a real "x's and o's" thread about the top 3 things needed for UWM to pull off an upset of the 6 seeded Oklahoma Sooners.

Here's my 3...

(1) Full-court defense. From what I've read on this board and other publications, it sounds like Terrell Everett is important for UWM to stop. I think if they can rattle him a little bit it will help and if they can get some easy baskets off the press, that will help also...obviously.

(2) Containing, not necessarily stopping Taj Gray/Kevin Bookout. From the little I've seen of OU this season it appears as though Gray is the go-to guy in the post, but that Bookout gets a lot of his points through cleaning up the garbage, so to speak. Bookout's a monster on the boards(both offensive & defensive) and if UWM can limit the 2nd chance opportunities from 2 feet away, that will be big.

(3) Knock down open 3's! If Boo Davis is hesitant as he's been in a few games early this season...it'll spell disaster. If he and other come out aggressive and looking to score, it will help UWM's chances greatly.

I think Boo scored the first 10 points vs. Loyola in the HL tournament and it really gave the team a boost.

[mikeb]

hmmm, this may sound generic but keeping to our game plan i think this is what we need for the upset:
1)Turnovers, i know hte big 12 doesnt like zone defense so whether we play alot of it or put on the press we need to force (taj gray especially) to make mistakes and we need to capitalize on them. points from turnovers could be the game.
2)Stop the 3. it seems like theyre a strong team inside but the 3s win them the game. let them have inside a little, (we need to stay way away from foul trouble) and make sure they dont knock down the 3s
I dont really know what to say we need to do offensively other than shoot well. its been almost the same offensive plan all season so as long as we play our game and stay out of foul trouble we should be ok

Things that scare me:
1)I dont know anything about their defense in the paint. we get alot of points down there and we'll need to continue
1a)I also dont know anything about the tempo they like to play at
2)this is a preseason top 10 team. they obviously have tons of talent but we need to stop them from meshing so to speak and keep them off their rythm
3)Close games and fouls. OU obviously knows how to win a close game so we need to take the lead and keep it. We need to hit our free throws and keep them as far away from the stripe as possible. again, this is a team that knows how to win close games so we need to protect the lead and play smart.

[nickzepp]

Those are probably about right. Both Gray and Bookout are great at getting the garbage usually. They are probably 2 of he better rebounders you guys will have faced this year.

[billhaverchuck]

The Big 12 is typically known as a league with alot of teams that play tough man to man defense. However that has changed recently. Iowa State plays mostly zone and Texas played more zone than man this year. Plus OU has seen more zone than man this year, by far. We have handled zones pretty well recently until people started throwing box and ones and other junk zones to stop Mike Neal because he had a stretch of games where he was getting 5-8 3 pointers for about 5 games or more.

Bookout has great touch around the post, he is in a race with Wayman Tisdale for the best FG% in OU history however his injuries have hampered his touch this year at times. Bookout is a good defender and Gray is a good shot blocker but is fundamentally not very good defensively.

Hopefully we can be one of those highly ranked teams that underachieve during the year and finally put it together in the tourney, but we could just as easily get bounced early.