Oklahoma Sooners

Virginia moves on to the Round of 32 on Sunday to face NCAA Tournament 9-seed Oklahoma, winners of the 8/9 game over Ole Miss in the early Friday game. Virginia is looking to return to the Sweet 16 for the first time since 2016, while Oklahoma is hoping a hot-shooting performance Friday carries over into the second round. These Sooners lack the star power of past OU tournament contenders, but head coach Lon Kruger has seen it all, took the 2016 Sooners to the Final Four, and will have Oklahoma well prepared for the Hoos. What is it going to take for Virginia to survive and advance?

Game Details:

What ‘They’ Say

Depth Chart:

The ABC’s of Oklahoma:

A) The offensive explosion against Ole Miss was atypical. The Sooners scored 95 points in a 40 minute pasting of the Rebels. It was the highest scoring output in an NCAAT game in years. Something for UVA to worry about? Maybe, maybe not. Don’t get me wrong, the NCAAT brings in lots of great offenses every year and still its rare to see teams break 90 points, so by all means credit where credit is due. Hats off to Oklahoma on a great offensive output.

And at the same time, where was that all year? In the 10-team Big XII, KenPom ranked OU’s offense second-to-last in efficiency. 9th in the league in eFG%, 9th in OR%, 9th in 3P%. In fact, below average in the Big XII in every offensive statistical category KenPom tracks with the exception of pace (3rd fastest offense). The better defensive teams they faced this year managed to really suppress their output. Texas Tech (KenPom’s #1 defense nationally) held them to 59 and 54 points in two wins over the Sooners. K-State (KenPom’s #5 defense nationally) held them to 61 and 53 points in beating them twice. So while Oklahoma has sometimes feasted on weaker defenses (such as scoring 92 on KenPom’s #102-ranked West Virginia defense, and Mississippi’s defense is only ranked 81st), it’s a question if they’ll be able to execute anywhere near that level against the Pack Line.

B) They want to do their damage in the paint. I mentioned their Big XII-second-worst 3P%, and they’ve certainly schemed to avoid that weakness, as they rarely take the long ball. Only 34% of their shots were from range, which was the lowest rate in the conference. Instead, they attack the paint in a variety of ways. 5-man and All-Big XII 3rd Teamer Doolittle is an Anthony Gill type face-up post who uses his strength to do all his damage at the rim. Big wing Odomes is a slasher who only took 16 3PAs all year, and backup guard Reynolds took about 80% of his shots from inside the arc. They do have a couple guys who are threats to space the floor, as 2-guard James, stretch-4 Manek, and PG Calixte will pull up from deep for about half of their shots, but none were better than 38% during conference play, and are at their best when playing downhill. The Pack Line will have to be very dialed in to defending the paint.

C) A conservative but efficient man defense is their calling card. The Sooners boasted the conference’s 4th best defense this year. Kruger is running a dense man defense most of the time that isn’t looking to force a lot of turnovers (7th of 10 in the Big XII in TO% and Steal rate), but instead merely force teams to take tough, contested shots. They were above average in the conference in both defensive 2P% and 3P%. This is thanks to a veteran, blue collar roster that Kruger has assembled, with 2 seniors starting and 3 more coming off the bench (two of whom, Calixte and Reynolds, are grad transfers), only 2 key rotation players are underclassmen, and most of whom have been with Kruger for a couple years. Their lack of size does affect them to some degree in the paint, as they struggle with defensive rebounding at times and don’t block a ton of shots. But their positional integrity is excellent, and could gum things up for Virginia’s offense at times.

Their Season To Date

Oklahoma is 20-13 on the year. They went 7-11 in the Big XII regular season, lost their first conference tournament game to bottom-seed WVU, and won their NCAAT opener against Ole Miss 95-72. The shared three common opponents with UVA. They played Wisconsin in the Battle 4 Atlantis semis, losing by 20, before UVA beat the Badgers the following day. They also played Dayton in the B4A consolation game, winning by 10 the day after UVA beat them by 7. Finally, OU beat Notre Dame by 5 on a neutral court in December, whereas UVA beat the Irish home and away by an average margin of 16.5. The Sooners’ best wins were over Wofford (home in November), Florida (B4A), Kansas, and Texas, while they had 2 bad losses to WVU. All other losses were to teams in the KenPom top 40.

Keys to getting the win:

1) Space the floor. Synergy Sports breaks down how the very good Sooner defense fares against a variety of attacks. There are a few places where they show as more average, to include defending iso plays (they rely on team help defense) and rolling screeners. Virginia can try to attack both of these by spreading the floor with shooters, drawing help defense away from the lane, and letting our better ball handlers like Hunter and Jerome work 1-on-1, or by running ball screens and hitting guys like Diakite and Huff (and after the NC State game, Salt!) on the roll with Jerome and Clark initiating the action. This spread floor set also allows our forwards to crash the glass in space, hopefully exploiting the Sooners’ below-average defensive rebounding.

2) Lock down the paint. We talked above about how the Sooners want to dominate from the paint to win the game, attacking the rim with both their bigs and guards. Oklahoma shot 28 of 46 (61%) from 2 against an Ole Miss team that was actually 3rd-best in the SEC in 2P% defense and had plenty of size. Oklahoma simply ran good sets, got decent looks, and knocked them down anyways. Virginia’s obviously got an elite defense that should be on another tier from Ole Miss’, but it really is as simple as Virginia having to be mentally locked in to its interior defense, helping and rotating effectively and cleanly, and subsequently finishing possessions off with a defensive rebound. If Oklahoma is going to keep pace with Virginia, it’s because it was able to impose its will inside against the Pack Line.

3) Play with ferocity. This is less tactical and more intangible. UVA has failed to come out and impose its will on an opponent early in a game in quite some time. It’s hard to say how much of this is UVA just getting everyone’s A-game from the tip, and how much is the Hoos needing to get punched in the mouth before really flipping a switch, a la Tony’s favorite movie boxer Rocky. But Virginia will do well to give OU a wake up call, both ends of the floor, that while rolling Ole Miss was all well and good, they’re trying to punch in an entirely different weight class against the Hoos.

Predictions:

The metrics love the Big XII conference, so one might be tempted to give the Sooners a bump due to a tough Strength of Schedule going through that conference grind. And to be sure, the Big XII doesn’t have the gimmes like Wake or GT or Pitt like the ACC does, so it’s in many ways a tougher slate. But it also lacks the top end programs like the ACC’s Top 5, especially with KU down this year, so to me that 7-11 conference record (7-12 if you count the league tourney) has to mean something.

Some may point to the extra few hours of rest the Sooners may have as an edge in this game (their game ended about 2.5 hours prior to ours, and they were able to run out more of the bench a little earlier). But we can look at the schedules to see how these teams played with similar turnarounds and see rays of hope. The Sooners played in a Saturday-Monday turnaround on 4 occasions and lost all 4. UVA, in 3 Sat-Mon turnarounds, won all 3 times. In neutral tournament bracket events, UVA went 4-1 (B4A and ACCT) where OU went 2-2 (B4A and and Big XII).

Bottom line, this was a bottom-half Big XII team that’s on par with, say, Clemson from the ACC. Can UVA lose it? Sure. Virginia’s historical underperformance in the Big Dance is very real. But controlling for the intangible aspects, if this game were in January, then we’d very confidently be picking the Hoos.

Maybe after that first half Friday, I’m not as confident, but in the end I’m picking Virginia regardless.

Hoos Win 67-61