Oklahoma was coming off its biggest win of the season, but the practice schedule was disjointed this last week because of final exams so head coach Porter Moser didn’t really know what to expect from his guys.
You’re not always going to be shooting well, but when you play defense as good as OU did Sunday, it’s not going to do matter. It was the defense that paved the way as the Sooners took care of visiting UT-Arlington 70-50 at Lloyd Noble Center to improve to 9-2 this season.
The Sooners had a lot of good offensive looks early, didn’t make a lot of them, but the defensive intensity never went away.
UTA began the game 1-for-14 from the field (7 percent) and didn’t score in the first seven minutes, with OU racing out to an 11-0 advantage and never looking back.
“I think that’s kind of part of our culture as a team,” center Tanner Groves said. “I think that how we start a game the first couple of rounds – we call it rounds – the first four minutes and the next four minutes. A huge part of our culture of a team is just coming out really strong defensively.
“Regardless of if the offense is going for us or not, we’re still going to defend no matter what. Tonight, they didn’t get on the board until like 12 or 13 (minutes left). I thought we came out strong defensively, and we’re going to continue to try to do that and it’s going to continue to be a part of our culture.”
UTA shot 25 percent from the field as OU took a comfortable 35-18 lead into halftime. UTA shot 34 percent for the game.
Eventually, OU’s offense broke through, thanks in large part to Mo Gibson. He led the way with 14 points and his first couple of 3-pointers calmed everybody down and OU handled its business from there.
Gibson connecting on four 3-pointers is nothing new, but Moser has challenged Gibson to be a lot more than that this season. That was evident vs. the Mavericks with Gibson grabbing a season-high eight rebounds.
“The first thing I said when I walked in the locker room, I talked about Mo’s rebounding, our first five’s defense, and then the 17 turnovers,” Moser said. “That was the order of it.
“So Mo’s rebounding down – we have it on our wall in there. We really challenge the last game the guards to come down. I think the Butler game we were relying on our bigs to get all the rebounds. Since then, we’ve really just challenged the guards to rebound down.”
The Sooners led by as many as 27 points in the second half and were never threatened the entire game.
Notes and observations
*The offensive scoring game wasn’t there for Jordan Goldwire, but he did a lot of other things to contribute to the win.
He had six assists and really set the tone defensively with three steals and just being an all-around pest for whoever had the ball for UTA.
“It’s active hands, and he’s doing it out of just ball pressure instead of gambling,” Moser said. “He just had good ball pressure, good active hands, and he got two of ‘em (steals) in the second half that I thought really got us going.”
*Another balanced effort as it’s becoming pretty clear that’s how this team is going to get the job done. Gibson had 14 points, and there was Tanner Groves with 13 points and Jalen Hill with 12 points.
The first five continues to do what is asked, but Moser is still looking for a lot more from the bench production, offensively and defensively.
“We’ve got to get deeper defensively,” Moser said. “We’ve got to get deeper offensively. When we start making some subs, we can’t have the defense go down. That’s something that we’ve really got to focus in on. We’ve been talking about depth a lot, but I think that first group has really set the tone, starting the game being on top of the scout and on top of just an edge to them defensively.”
*OU (9-2) hosts Alcorn State on Wednesday night for its final non-conference game before the Big 12 season starts Jan. 1 vs. Kansas State.
