Oklahoma at Kansas Basketball Preview
After a surprising loss in the first road game of conference play, the Kansas Jayhawks are back at home for a top-10 matchup in which KU will look to get right and avoid an early losing streak.
Opponent Overview
Team: Oklahoma
Record: 13-2
KenPom: 20
Line: KU -5.5
Team Form
No one saw this Oklahoma start coming. At least none of the coaches who voted in the Big 12 preseason polls. Because Oklahoma was picked to finish 12th out of 14 teams, only ahead of BYU and UCF (those are also looking like bad predictions). Instead, the Sooners won their first 10 games to start the season.
There weren’t many world-beaters in there – and some of those teams looked better in November than they do now – but there are high-major wins regardless. OU beat the likes of Iowa, USC, Providence, and Arkansas before losing to North Carolina. It then opened up conference play with a good win against Iowa State before falling to a dangerous TCU team on the road on Wednesday.
Players to Watch
One of the reasons people were low on OU to start was because it wasn’t clear where production was going to come from. Oklahoma’s top two players so far have been Javian McCollum and Otega Oweh. McCollum came over from Siena, where he was productive as a sophomore. But he’s basically matched that at a higher level of competition, averaging 14.9 points and four assists on 40% shooting from three. Meanwhile, Oweh didn’t do much to impress as a freshman in Norman, averaging just 4.8 points and two rebounds in 13 minutes per game. But this year he’s broken out, averaging 14.3 points and 3.9 boards in 26 minutes.
After those two, OU has five players averaging between seven and 9.5 points per game and play between 18-30 minutes per game. Going up against Hunter Dickinson down low is Sam Godwin, who currently leads the country in offensive rebounding percentage at 25%, meaning he grabs an offensive board on one of every four possible offensive rebounds he could get. Godwin grabs 3.6 offensive boards per game and averages 8.2 points on 70% shooting from two-point range. And it doesn’t get a ton easier when he comes out as John Hugley, a Pitt transfer, is putting up 9.5 points and 4.7 rebounds on an efficient 66.7% shooting from inside the arc.
Matchups to Watch
Who is winning the turnover battle? That feels like a common theme with this Kansas team, and it’s definitely true against Oklahoma because the Sooners are equally careless with the ball. OU has only had two games this year where it had turned the ball over fewer than 10 times (the low being eight against Iowa). Kansas has done that three times (the low being seven against Kansas City). Oklahoma had 18 and 14 turnovers respectively in its two losses. KU needs to make sure to win this area of the game on Saturday.
Like Kansas, Oklahoma is much better inside the arc than from deep. The Sooners are shooting 58.7% from two, which is 10th nationally, while shooting a respectable, but not scorching, 35% from three. This is helped by OU’s outstanding offensive rebounding, where it grabs 33.5% of its misses.
On the flip side, teams have shot terribly from three – just 27.9% from deep – against the Sooners. But some of that is a carry-over from the early part of the season. As we know, three-point defense is one of the hardest variables to have control over. Some of it is luck. A few teams have still performed well against this defense. Seven teams have actually made seven or more threes in a game against OU, and only two of those times did the opponent shoot less than 30% from three for the game. Who is going to step up and make big shots for KU in this one? That’s definitely something to watch.
Prediction
Both teams are coming off a loss and will be motivated to get right in this one. Kansas should have more of an edge to it considering how its loss went on Wednesday, and will be helped out by being at home where the KU crowd will be equally ready to get that bad taste out of their mouth.
The good news for Kansas is that Oklahoma doesn’t have the type of defense that will create steals and blocks at a high clip like TCU or UCF. But this is still a quality team that Kansas will have to play well to beat. Johnny Furphy is coming on at the right time, but KU needs more out of Elmarko Jackson and Nick Timberlake in this one. And, of course, there’s the knee injury Dickinson is dealing with coming out of the TCU game.
The Jayhawks are going to feed off the crowd and should be ready for a fight – if this team has the demeanor you want from a contender – so it’s hard for me to pick them to lose at home. But I do think Oklahoma covers by the narrowest of margins.
Kansas 72, Oklahoma 67
Record ATS: 8-7
Record Straight Up: 13-2
(Last game: UCF 65, Kansas 60)
