Kristian Doolittle does A LOT in Oklahoma Basketball’s 95-72 win against Ole Miss. Here were the keys for the Sooners victory.
In my last article I wrote about three things Oklahoma needed to try to do in order to get past the Ole Miss Rebels. Lets see how they fared shall we?
The Rebels had 8 more turnovers than the Sooners.
Key number one I thought the Sooners should focus on was winning the turnover battle. Oklahoma achieved this goal in fascinating fashion forcing 11 turnovers, ten of those being steals. But that’s not the most astonishing thing about their effort, as Oklahoma had only THREE turnovers in the whole game.
Not only did this limit Ole Miss from playing their efficient brand of offense they like to play, those steals let to some easy transition points for the boys wearing red. Ole Miss shot 53% in the first half, but their turnovers led to easy transition points, allowing Oklahoma to shoot an even more efficient 58% at the break.
Oklahoma won the rebound battle.
Now, I thought Oklahoma would win this by a much larger margin, but they still won nonetheless edging out the Rebels grabbing 30 rebounds to their 28. I guess the only knock on their game Friday was the fact that the rebound battle was so close, and that they allowed seven offensive rebounds. (They lost the offensive rebound game grabbing two less with five)
I thought the turnover battle would be close although, and it wasn’t, so the Sooners dominating in that aspect of the game really just balanced things out.
FOUR Oklahoma players had 18 points or more.
This is what has me so excited. I begged for “More consistent scoring threats” calling out Senior Christian James, and the teams second leading scorer Brady Manek.
Those two answered the call, as James scored 20 points on an efficient 7-12 shooting, going 4-7 from three-point land. Manek was efficient as well going 7-9 and scoring 18 points to help the teams cause. But the buck didn’t stop there. Rashard Odomes shot a, you guessed it, efficient 8-10 from the field scoring twenty points, which tied the team for the lead. The team took advantage of his mix-match on offense, which allowed him to have a big day. My virtual game ball has to go to Kristian Doolittle, the 6’7″ 236 pound junior exploited mix-matches as well, as that led to him scoring 19 points while also dropping five dimes and grabbing FIFTEEN rebounds, which accounted for half the teams boards.
What other good things did Oklahoma do?
So what other things did OU do outside of those three key things I pointed out?
I really liked the way Oklahoma not only got to the free-throw line, but also liked how well they shot from the charity stripe, as they went 21-26 to average out at a grand total of 80.8%.
I also relished on the fact that they only allowed Ole Miss to shoot only four foul shots, which is 22 less than Oklahoma. Now, part of that is the fact that Ole Miss started shooting more and more three pointers as the game went on trying to catch up, but it is still an outstanding achievement.
So to recap, Oklahoma dominated from the get go, making Ole Miss coach Kermit Davis call a timeout just one minute and twenty seconds into the game, and they never really looked back.
They were able to force steals to create easy buckets on the fast-break and took advantages of mix-matches to shoot a very efficient 57.6% from the field.
The biggest thing from the day was the scoring for Oklahoma as they set a season high for points scored, and they did it with four players making key contributions. If Oklahoma can keep playing defense like they have all year long along with this type of offensive production, we could very well possibly be seeing a lot more of Oklahoma in this tournament.
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