OU Basketball: Three Takeaways From Oklahoma's Wire-to-Wire Win Over Georgia

NORMAN — The week off proved to be beneficial for Jennie Baranczyk’s No. 15-ranked Sooners.

Oklahoma hosted Georgia on Sunday, its first contest since last week’s blowout loss to South Carolina, and things were much more comfortable at the Lloyd Noble Center.

The Sooners proved to be far too much for the Bulldogs, as OU rolled to a 86-55 wire-to-wire win over Georgia.

"After you don’t play for a week you do have some kind of normal game rust," Baranczyk said. "But I felt like our energy, the way that we started, I thought that was really good.

“... I’m really proud of the way we’ve responded... We looked at it, we owned it, we fell down and we’ll continue to get up and keep growing. And I’m really proud of this group of women for being able to do that.”

Payton Verhulst and Raegan Beers led the Sooners in scoring, dropping 13 points apiece to push Oklahoam to 16-4 on the year and 4-3 in SEC play.

Georgia fell to 9-12 overall and 1-6 in conference contests.

Here are Sooners on SI’s three takeaways from the OU win:

Line Change

The coaching staff had a little tweak coming out of the frustrating performance against South Carolina.

Guard Reyna Scott was inserted into the starting lineup for Nevaeh Tot, a reward for Scott’s nice play over the past month.

"There were a couple of different things that went into that decision. I think Reyna has really elevated her game as of late," Baranczyk said. "I think Reyna does a really good job of continuing to set other people up. She’s finding her own game. She’s really maturing a lot right now. I thought she had a couple really good days of practice."

Oklahoma rushed out to a quick 8-2 lead, forcing Georgia to burn a timeout, before Baranczyk’s line changes truly started to get rolling.

Once the Sooners got going, there was little the Bulldogs could do to slow OU down.

Scott finished with six points on 2-of-5 shooting, and she also pulled down four rebounds and added an assist.

"I thought her pace was really good," Baranczyk said. "I thought her willingness to just shoot act open shot was really good… I don’t know how we’ll keep going but I really liked the way that we started today."

Baranczyk’s team built a 24-point halftime lead by knocking down five 3-pointers and only turning the ball over eight times in the first half.

With no game during the midweek, the coaching staff had plenty of time to direct the team to look within themselves for improvements, and the result was a crisp opening 20 minutes of basketball on Sunday.

Bounce Back

Only six Sooners managed to score last week against South Carolina.

There were no such issues against Georgia.

Led by Verhulst, four different players scored double digits for Oklahoma against the Bulldogs.

Beers looked much more herself, finishing with 13 points and 11 rebounds, and Sahara Williams attacked the rim relentlessly.

She got to the free throw line eight times, and she knocked down six of those attempts en route to adding 12 points, four rebounds and three assists.

Liz Scott also finished with 10 points on 4-of-5 shooting.

The performance was especially nice to see from Verhulst, however, after she was only able to chip in three points against South Carolina following her career-best showing against Missouri in the game prior.

Bench Blitz

The offense came from all over for Oklahoma.

OU’s bench was responsible for 38 points on Sunday.

Led by Liz Scott, the Sooners’ second unit kept the offense in rhythm.

Zya Vann hit a couple of shots early to extend OU’s lead in the first half, and Tot drilled a pair of 3’s in her slightly altered role.

Reserve center Landry Allen had some nice minutes as well, scoring six points, pulling down three rebounds and dishing out an assist as she continues to get opportunities in SEC play.

With a trip to Baton Rouge, LA, to take on LSU looming on Thursday, the Sooners will need a strong effort from the top of the roster to the bottom to notch an upset win over the Tigers.