'Blue Collar' Oklahoma Goes to Work During Extended Break Ahead of NCAA Tournament Opener

NORMAN — By the time Oklahoma tips off against Idaho in the NCAA Tournament late Friday night at Lloyd Noble Center, the Sooners will have gone two weeks between games.

It’s been a fortnight since Jennie Baranczyk’s team was hammered 112-78 by LSU in the quarterfinals of the SEC Tournament.

“This was an interesting year because you can — your team can go one of two ways after what happened at the tournament and playing LSU,” Baranczyk said. “We had some good moments, and then our wheels fell off.

“It was a good week for us to make some decisions — are you going to focus on getting better, looking in the mirror and really focusing on working hard? Or you can fall apart. Those are kind of your two options,” Baranczyk said.

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Her team, Baranczyk said, is made for that kind of test.

“I think one of the things we do really well is we’re very, very blue collar,” Baranczyk said. “We’re very able to roll up our sleeves, put our boots on, and go to work. I think we’re able to look in the mirror, and we didn’t blame anybody else. We just said, ‘OK, we failed. We’re not failures. We failed again.’ We’ve had some taste of that, right? The SEC Conference is no joke. Two years ago you added us and Texas, and it makes it even stronger right now. You look at the teams, you go through that selection show, and it’s like SEC, SEC, SEC. ‘We’ve played them. We’ve played them. We’ve played them. We’ve fallen short. We might have won that game.’ There is so much talent in that league.”

Sahara Williams echoed her coach’s views.

“Humility builds a lot of character,” Williams said. “We’ve learned. This is a group that wants to get better and wants to be in those positions in the big moments.”

Oklahoma is one of 10 teams from the SEC in the field. Five of those earned top four seeds and the right to host in the first two rounds.

It’s the second consecutive year of having that much time between the conference tournament and the NCAA opener for the Sooners after the move to the SEC.

Baranczyk said having a week of practice before finding out their tournament opponent was a bonus after experiencing shorter turnaround times during Oklahoma’s time in the Big 12.

“We focused on ourselves,” Baranczyk said. “We didn’t focus on projected opponents. We don’t focus on anything other than we’ve played some really, really good teams in the past couple of years — in fact, if you look at the top 10, we’ve played every team. So you’re able to see what you look like against those teams and areas that you find success and areas that you have to get better.”

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The Sooners have played a combined 15 games over the last two seasons against teams in the current top nine of The Associated Press poll. OU comes in at No. 10.

Baranczyk said she was particularly impressed with how her young players — like Aaliyah Chavez and Brooklyn Stewart — handled the week after the loss to LSU.

“I thought they really got in the gym and worked,” Baranczyk said. “Our older players knew. They understand the experience. They understand every minute counts. Your younger players don’t understand that.”