Sooner Basketball Notes

Ahh, it's good to be king! Well, not officially - but Oklahoma became the de facto #1 team with the best record in the top-25 and only 1 loss as UConn went down last night. Anyways, here's some nuggets about the basketball team in the news or what-not:

• As was noted in a recent story on the blog, Blake Griffin and Willie Warren took home Big 12 Player of the Week and Big 12 Rookie of the Week honors, respectively. Congrats to them.
• The Sooners have stayed relatively injury free the entire season, which has definately helped. But that doesn't mean they aren't banged up a little bit. That's why this week-long break comes at a great time, right before a 3-day stretch with games in Austin and hosting the Jayhawks.
• OU gets hated on in a lot of rating systems. We are 14th in the Ken Pomeroy rankings which seems exceptionally low. I've seen those ratings used by other blogs on this network as a scouting report and/or game predictor. Pretty interesting.
• Speaking of the Pomeroy rankings, they do offer predictions of future games. It gives us two more losses, a 72-73 loss at Texas (a 47% chance of us winning), and a 82-76 loss at Mizzou (a 28% chance of us winning). Granted it has Texas ranked #25 and Mizzou ranked #8. Another interesting tidbit from the Pomeroy rankings, we have the 4th most efficient offense in the country!
• And speaking of Texas, they are on a pretty epic slide. They've lost 4 of their last 6, and were taken to overtime by Colorado in one of those wins. Not only did they lose last night to Texas A&M they got dominated. That being said, I always hate hitting underachieving teams right when they are nearing what should be the end of their slump. Especially in a rivalry game at their place. Texas is 10-2 at home, so they could cause some problems.
• OU has wound up with some pretty impressive non-conference victories. Utah is 18-6 with an RPI of 11. Virginia Commonwealth is 18-8 with an RPI of 66. USC is 15-9 with an RPI of 43. Purdue is 19-6 with an RPI of 27. UAB is 17-8 with an RPI of 39. Davidson is 21-4 with an RPI of 50. All of that adds up to a seasoned team. Not to mention we won the preseason NIT against some stiff competition, so it looks like we can compete well on neutral courts and in tournaments.
• We have a stellar recruiting class for next year. Jeff Capel knows what he's doing. ESPN has it as the 4th best class nationally.

That's it! Boomer!