Oklahoma’s finest sooner looking for a foreman This season, Porter Moser has repeated the same message frequently: Oklahoma cannot allow its offense to dictate its defense.
The Sooners cannot let their offensive achievements or failures to affect their effort on defense, regardless of whether their shots are falling or they are struggling with turnovers. After suffering back-to-back defeats to TCU and Kansas the previous week, the players at OU responded well to the message during Wednesday’s get-right victory over West Virginia at home.
Now, as No. 15 Oklahoma (14-3, 2-2 Big 12) prepares to take on Cincinnati (13-4, 2-2) in a tough conference road game on Saturday at 12 p.m. CT, Moser is stressing his squad once more of the need of bringing its defensive tenacity.
“It’s got to be every game,” Moser said. “You can’t win in this league unless you’re defending. Every team defends, and if you’re not defending at a high level, it makes it very hard.”
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Oklahoma has defended well in its two wins in Big 12 play, holding both Iowa State and West Virginia to 63 points apiece. The Cyclones shot just 42.6% from the field and 18.8% from 3-point range against the Sooners, while the Mountaineers were held to 39% shooting in the first half and committed 16 turnovers — with a 17.6% turnover rate — at the Lloyd Noble Center.
“Getting back to guarding and finding our identity again is important,” point guard Milos Uzan said.
Saturday in Cincinnati against a physical Bearcats team that has already secured a pair of wins against top-20 teams in conference play, beating BYU on the road and TCU at home in the last two weeks. The most recent of those was Tuesday’s 81-77 win against the same Horned Frogs team that defeated the Sooners in Fort Worth, Texas, last week.
“Going into Cincinnati, they’re super physical,” Moser said. “They’re deep. They got a lot of different matchups. They’ll play two 6-11 guys at the same time. They have an extremely quick, physical point guard, and then they got physical, old wings. They’re very good. I mean, they’re really good. They’re as physical a team — that TCU-Cincinnati game was as physical as you’ll see in college basketball, anywhere. You got to be ready for that.”
