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I said in a post last week that Oklahoma's basketball team would only go as far as Tony Crocker's hot hand could carry them. Saturday Crocker cooled off and the Sooners were upset by a scrappy Stephen F. Austin team that out hustled, out shot and out played the Sooners on their way to a 66-62 win.
Paying all due respect to the Lumber Jacks Oklahoma's basketball woes were twofold on Saturday. Tony Crocker who had been blistering the nets for OU didn't make a single shot from the floor and scored his four points from the charity stripe. As a team the Sooners shot only 40% from the floor with Omar Leary and Keith Clark joining Crocker as players who got into the game but didn't score from the floor.
Oklahoma turned the ball over 15 times Saturday and most of them couldn't have come at a worse time. OU squandered opportunities to take the lead, tie or just draw closer to SFA with careless turnovers.
When you lose a game by only four points there are several things you can go back and look at to find where you may have surrendered opportunities to score. OU won't have to look very far to find that 30 missed shots from the floor and six missed free throws were the difference makers.
Until Saturday the Sooners could say that their only losses of the season came at the hands of two nationally ranked teams. To a team that's rebuilding that could actually be an encouraging thing. No they've taken a huge step backwards becoming the next school from a major conference to be upset by a team from a mid-major conference.
With Arkansas, Gonzaga and West Virginia up next on the schedule the Sooners have a chance to make up some ground that was lost on Saturday but they're going to need a lot more consistent play from the guards. Tony Crocker, Omar Leary and Austin Johnson combined for eight turnovers to only three assists and fifteen points on 3-18 shooting. If that line wasn't good enough to beat SFA it certainly won't work against the next three opponents.
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