OU snatches defeat from the jaws of victory on the road against Texas A&M

There certainly have been better Oklahoma teams than this one and we've seen just a year or two ago that there have been worse Oklahoma teams. But I'm not sure there has been a more frustrating team than this year's squad. I can appreciate that expectations need to be kept in check, but for this team with their known issues to absolutely blow two VERY winnable conference road games is beyond frustrating.

Oklahoma never really pulled away on the scoreboard, but watching it just felt like they were in control for the most part virtually the entire game. Then the overtime started. But before we get to that, we need to address an obvious problem with this team. And it's their ability to get a quality shot off or even just run what would look like a competent set play in "last shot" type situations. In this game alone, at both the end of the first and second halves, the Sooners looked totally lost in the waning seconds and wound up taking terrible shots with little chance of success. It's something that has been happening all season and something that is pretty surprising when you consider Lon Kruger's coaching experience.

But back to the disaster that was overtime. Oklahoma had the first possession, Romero Osby turned it over after 15 seconds had expired, and sadly that was about the same time OU's chances of winning ended. A&M made every field goal they attempted in overtime while the Sooners struggled to find any kind of rhythm on offense. The Aggies played a zone defense for most of the game that gave OU fits both for their inability to get the ball inside to Osby and Andrew Fitzgerald as much as needed as well as their inability to hit outside shots.

Despite getting double digits from Osby (18), Fitzgerald (17), and Pledger (16), they got little contribution from anyone else. Sam Grooms didn't play terribly finishing with nine points, actually making several jump shots for the first time maybe ever, but he struggled getting Oklahoma into their offense in the half court sets. Cameron Clark started for the first time in two games, but continued to struggle with his jump shot. More importantly though, with Clark starting the Sooners have absolutely nothing off the bench that even remotely resembles a scoring threat. It's not very often you shoot 49% from the field and lose the game, but when your opponent shoots nearly 53% it can take some of the shine off your own hot shooting.

I simply can't get away from the disappointment in losing another winnable game. Let alone another conference road game. These are the kind of wins this team so desperately needs if they really have aspirations of post season play. Sadly, they now have two losses where they could have two very valuable conference road wins. 4-2 sure would sound a hell of a lot better than 2-4 does.