It's back to the basics for Oklahoma as they head into the postseason
Closing the season on a four-game skid, the Oklahoma Sooners have a chance to wipe away the frustrations of the past two weeks once the Big 12 Tournament tips off on Wednesday.
Facing the Iowa State Cyclones, who are winless in league play, OU just has to focus on one game at a time to stay alive the rest of the season.
Head coach Lon Kruger said it will be important to focus on each individual game to turn things around, instead of trying to paper over all of the struggles of late at once.
“That’s the important thing is just to do all the things you can from an execution standpoint,” he said during a video press conference on Monday. “It’s not so much thinking about trying to win again as much as doing all the things that you did last month when you all all those games. Again, there’s not much difference, the margins are pretty small.
“I think in the Big 12, I mean, when you look at maybe our 18 games, all but three of them went down to really the last minute or two, and that’s the way it is in the Big 12.”
Despite the rough patch to close the year, senior guard Austin Reaves said the team is still confident in their ability to finish off games.
“We know we have the ability to go out and win basketball games,” he said. “We really just got to stick them out.”
One area in which Oklahoma can improve is their defensive consistency across all 40 minutes of a game. In the six January games where Elijah Harkless played as a starter, the Sooners only allowed an average of 61.2 points her game. Since the calendar turned to February, OU has allowed 72.4 points per game in their final eight games of the regular season.
“I think we put a big emphasis on defense in practice this past week,” Harkless said. “I think we are taking more initiative to be better on that end of the floor.
“I think we’ve been up to that standard, but it’s been a couple of possession that we without took off or, you know, there’s things that we could tweak to ultimately change the outcome.”
The extra days off allowed the Sooners to really hit the practice floor and work on themselves for the first time in a few weeks after playing four games in 10 days to close the year, Harkless said.
“More attention to detail in practice and taking care of every possession,” he said. “I think we’ve gotten better every single day in practice.”
Not only has Oklahoma been able to pay greater attention to the smaller details in practice, but they’ve been able to physically prepare for the grind of the tournament over the past few days, Kruger said.
“An opportunity to sharpen some things up, an opportunity to get treatment, you know, away from the competition, rehab a little bit more,” Kruger said. “All those things you don’t get to do when you’re playing three games in six-seven days.”
The Sooners will take the court against the Cyclones in day one of the Big 12 Tournament on Wednesday evening from the T-Mobile Center in Kansas City at approximately 8:30 p.m. The third matchup of the season between Oklahoma and Iowa State will be broadcast on ESPN.
“It’s tournament time, it’s a great time of the year,” Kruger said. “Everyone gets a little boost energy-wise form that, and the player love it.
“It’s a great time.”
