OU basketball needs its 'maniacs' to win at Tennessee
OU head coach Porter Moser did not phrase it exactly this way, but he sure as heck could have. Pure coincidence that the Sooners are at Tennessee because it’s what Vols head coach Rick Barnes said that might resonate a bit.
One big way to know if your team is improving, Barnes said, is you need some maniacs. Explaining more, Barnes is talking the 3-4 guys who want to play more, who maybe should be playing more. Those guys, instead of getting dejected or disgruntled, need to push.
Need to keep pushing the starters every day in practice and pushing themselves to make the staff put them in more.
OU (13-12, 3-9) at Tennessee (18-7, 8-4)
When: 6 p.m.
TV: ESPN2
It’s happening for the Vols right now because, outside of playing Kentucky, Tennessee has been on a very nice roll.
Who are the OU maniacs? How about Dayton Forsythe, Jadon Jones, Kuol Atak and Jeff Nwankwo? If three of those four show up on a given night, the probability the Sooners have won goes way up.
Like way up. You’re seeing it right now on a consistent basis with Forsythe. Back-to-back games of 12 points and 13 points and filling the stat sheet in other ways. Nobody is expecting 6-for-7 from 3-point land from Atak again, but just a little something.
A little something from Atak, a little something from Jones, and you’ll live with everything else. Those are the guys whose minutes fluctuate the most depending on flow of the game and their own performance.
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And Nwankwo is back.
Someone like Kirill Elatontsev is a pure necessity. Mo Wague cannot play 40 minutes, obviously, even if he wasn’t in foul trouble. Elatontsev’s minutes will come. But ‘the maniacs’ for OU? They need to make their initial minutes count to earn more.
You look at the OU schedule, and this is, on paper, by far the toughest game remaining. Although Moser will talk about the path this, the path that, not sure anybody’s path to success is a win in Knoxville.
If OU has truly turned the corner, maybe Wednesday night will be a lot more interesting than anybody would have predicted a couple of weeks ago.
Ament has figured it out
The problem is if you believe that OU has gotten better, so, too, has a team like Tennessee. A lot of that stems from freshman Nate Ament.
Perhaps still trying to figure things out before, Ament has got it locked down now. It’s not just the 17 points and six rebounds, he’s carrying himself around like the top-tier freshman he was expected to be.
Can OU make it two in a row on the road? Sure as heck won’t be easy.
