OU game

Texas goes with huge lineup--Hamilton, Brown, James, Johnson and Pittman. Gets a stop, scores, and Brown goes down with a foot injury.
 
OU acting beat. They come down, jack up a shot and don't get back on defense. Hamilton gets ahead, gets pass from Brown,and goes around one defender back for teh score. Texas up 5.
 
This team just does not understand defense. We just got a 5 point lead and the defense lets up and lets Davis shoot a wide open 3. **** this is so frustrating.
 
OU has only played 7 guys this game. They may very well be wearing down. Davis is 6-8 from outside. Rest of OU is 3-10. Just stay on him, please.
 
Texas working the ball in consistently and OU fouling on most possessions. Wright out. Fitzgerald with 4. Play some defense, and this gane is won.
 
AFter OU's first initial flurry, Texas has dominated this game, outscoring OU by 22, outrebounding them by 32-15. Would be nice to not have games/halves start with the team coming out flat and spotting the opponents 10 or 12 points.
 
Is there seriously not one person in the State of Oklahoma that can tell Asst. Basketball Coach Oronde Taliaferro to get rid of that ridiculous unibrow??

OrondeTaliaferro.jpg
 
Obviously, this game could be different if Warren was playing. On the other hand, it might also be different if Balbay was healthy (not to mention Ward). That's just the way the Big 12 has gone this season...significant injuries to every team. Nice win. Not sure how much it means, but you've got to start somewhere.
 
Remember--Crocker's favorite move is to drive at the defender, get him to retreat, then step back and shoot. Over and over and over.
 
I forget which one said it, Musberger or Knight, but how we perform in Waco will really show if UT is going to make any noise in March.
 
Texas won today mainly as a result of dominating the glass. Brown and Hamilton worked pretty well with the offense, but Brown still has a tendency to go into some kind of a zone in which he doesn't seem to be doing the smart thing but instead the ooooh thing. Hamilton was extremely active on the boards.

Texas pulled away when it went to the bigger lineup, but OU is a thin team. Even if Texas used the Pittman, James, Johnson, Hamilton, and Brown lineup against Baylor, it would have no size advantage against Baylor. I wonder if Crocker hadn't had the ankle twist, if that lineup would have been able to prevent perimeter shooting.

Good win. Let's beat Baylor and finish 10-6.
 
The bigger lineup -- Brown, Hamilton, James, Johnson, Pittman -- looked very smooth, effortless and cohesive. Bob Knight complimented it as our best lineup or something to that effect.

I think it was just dumb luck that got us to put that lineup on the court. Bradley was in foul trouble, and Pittman wasn't, neither of which happened before.

James looked very comfortable playing 3 which is no surprise since he worked hard to play it last year. Hamilton looked right at home playing 2.

I think this lineup needs another serious look against Baylor and in the conference tournament.

The big question is then: Where do you put Bradley? Even though he's been solid all season long, his offense has slumped recently. Maybe he needs fewer minutes to stay fresh. He can spell either Hamilton or Brown. Just a thought.
 
I don't see how we would wind up with two games against Baylor, unless we meet them in the finals.

I think it is likely A&M wins out, getting OSU at home and OU on the road. Let's assume A&M wins out and Baylor beats Tech.

If Texas wins, it winds up no worse than tied with Baylor for 5th place/6th place, behind KU, KSU, A&M and MU. If MU beats KU, Texas gets the tie-breaker over Baylor for having beaten OSU twice. Texas draws NU or ISU in game one and MU in game two.

If MU loses to KU, it drops into a tie with Baylor and Texas. Divisional ties are decided first, so Texas beats Baylor, but Missouri beat Texas head to head, so the order winds up MU, UT, Baylor, even though Baylor is 2-1, MU 1-1, Texas 1-2 in the games among them. Texas still gets NU or ISU, then MU in round two.

Get past MU, and the winner of KU-whoever is waiting. Texas won't be able to see Baylor until the finals, I think.
 
Good win.
We are bad. Very bad. A lot of it is youth and a lack of depth, so I'm just hopeful we can rebound next year.

bierce, your comments about UT seem to fall in line with my team, too. We run down, jack-up a three, don't get back on defense and the cycle starts all over again.

You guys may be frustrated, but I can assure you that your season isn't any more disappointing than mine.
 
Texas always looks better when Pittman doesn't have to go up against a big big man and he can stay on the court more.

Frustrating part of this game though was Texas trailing for such a large part of it. Texas was clearly the better team but for some reason just couldn't get over the hump. Once they get over the hump their confidence goes up and they pull away. But when they are down by 3-5 points that can easily become a 12 point deficit and many games get out of reach. They need to stop playing from behind for large parts of games like this.
 
OU seems like a pretty well-coached team in many regards that just doesn't have the depth or the athleticism they need to have, even though they've got a lot of basketball talent - good shooters, good ballhandlers, etc. One thing I don't understand that seems like poor coaching though - why do they hardly ever send ANYONE to the offensive glass? I understand you might not want 4 guys crashing the boards every time you shoot when you've got a 7-man rotation, but most of the time Texas was literally going 5 on 0 to get defensive rebounds. One time I noticed OU only had 1 player within the 3 point line when we grabbed the rebound - and that guy was at the elbow and in the process of sprinting back on defense.

Their offense looked pretty crisp and their D looked like it was doing the best it could do, too. At some point in the 2nd half they either just got tired or else maybe they were simply outmatched.

Our perimeter D wasn't that good, and thankfully Mason-Griffin didn't seem to recognize that he was able to get by our guys most of the time. He could have been penetrating into the teeth of our D to set up open men, but a lot of times he would take 1 or 2 dribbles, get past his man, and then just back right out to the 3-point line and reset the offense. I'm not looking forward to playing this guy when he realizes how good he can be.

Refs did the main thing you can ask of an officiating crew - stay consistent from 1 half to the next and from 1 team to the other. But they did way too much "offensive player causes contact and gets the foul on the defender". Happened to Justin Mason at the beginning of both halves, for example, once in his favor and once against. If anything I think it favored us more, since we were driving to the hoop a lot more.

But there was one thing so blatantly erroneous that I could seriously not believe I actually saw someone believe it was correct - the "on the floor" call when Gary Johnson got knocked over in the 2nd half. Would somebody please tell me how a player being run into IN THE MIDDLE OF A SLAM DUNK ATTEMPT does not qualify as a shooting foul?
 
Perimeter defense was horrible in the first half. Crocker hit three early, twice over Mason, once easily over Lucas. Maybe Mason wasn't tight enough, but the shot over Lucas was just a height advantage that had Lucas helpless.

The real problem happened when Brown came in, then Bradley drew his second foul. Davis lit up Brown. Brown was playing way too far off Davis, tended to give up upon feeling a screen, and got left behind when his man would run through traffic. Had Bradley not been in foul trouble, I'm sure Brown would have quickly returned to the bench. Instead, Texas tried switching Brown off Davis, but there were still problems.

Case in point--10:22 mark of first half. Brown has been reassigned from Davis to Mason-Griffin who has the ball, left side, hands off to another man on a cross without screen. Brown relaxes, and his man cuts to the basket. Brown is late following, gets screened, then goes after his man who has run around to the right side, taken the ball, drives into the lane, forcing other defenders to collapse, leaving Crocker wide open underneath for the layup. That play happened because Brown lost focus the moment his player first gave up the ball and he never was in good defensive position again on that play.

The last three OU hit in the first half happened when Mason-Griffin drove at Brown, got him leaning left, went arond him into the free throw circle and would have driven into the lane, but James came over, leaving Davis open, who took the pass and hit the open shot. Brown was trying to hang with his man there, so I won't be too critical, but he didn't stay in front of Mason-Griffin, causing the defense to leave Davis.

I think Brown can be adequate as a defender, but he has to work at it and has to keep focused on defense all the time. He can't lose him man and not go find him. He can't relax when his man passes the ball.

With all that having been said, OU hit its first 5 three point attempts. It went 5-19 the rest of the way. Part of that was due to fatigue, no doubt, but part was due to Texas picking it up defensively. I'm really impressed with Hamilton's improvement on that end.
 
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