Welcome to the quick recap of the toughest-to-watch game of a tough-to-watch Cowboy season. After a couple of nicely played home wins had us fantasizing that this Cowboy team had figured themselves out and might contend for some NCAA Tourney play after all, a road game performance throws a bucket of vomit into our faces, waking us from our short lived dream. The chances of an at-large bid now sit at 0%, and as a bonus we get to add another bedlam loss and widen the series deficit to 127-90. (Was that the most depressing paragraph ever written at CRFF/WO? I say yes.)
The offensive performance from the Pokes was borderline baffling. I don't know why the Sooners switch to a zone was so confusing to the team, especially coming on the heels of the Baylor game where zone was all they saw, but the offense was slow and stagnant, Moses didn't get nearly enough touches yet still managed 16 points, and once again the Pokes were plagued by not being able to finish at the rim. If the NCAA kept stats for "shooting percentage after a great drive, excellent jump to the rim, nice body control, and a smooth release", Jean-Paul Olukemi would be at about 30-110 (27%) on the season, and the Cowboys as a whole would have to rate out dead last in the conference. I have never seen a team (and specifically JPO) that is so prolific at getting to the rim, with such a poor ability to finish. And to back that up, the official stats have the Cowboys at 13-22 on layup attempts for this game (59%). Couple that with the usual poor three point shooting (18.2%), 16 turnovers to 5 assists (Good Lord, I didn't know an A-T ratio could honestly get as low as 0.23), and you have the recipe for a poor offensive performance, resulting in only 61 points, against a team that has been giving up 75 a game over their 8 game losing streak.
On the defensive end, the Pokes performance was pretty solid overall, however there were key possessions where they just couldn't come up with a stop. A couple of possessions in the 2nd half resulted in wide open looks for Steven Pledger who was hitting, and Cade Davis was able to get to the FT line at will. Matt Pilgrim and Marshall Moses each met their quota of a foul a piece on the other side of half-court, while JPO (who couldn't do much right today) fouled out.
In spite of all of this, the Cowboys had a chance at the end as they were down 3 with 15 seconds left and with the ball. The final possession consisted of Page dribbling back and forth around the key 9 times before finally figuring out that he was quintuple teamed and dropping it for Reger Dowell who had a very nice look from the left wing that appeared on line from our camera angle. Alas, it was not to be as it clanged off the right iron and some Sooner prick grabbed the rebound as time expired.
With the loss the Cowboys lock down 9th place in the conference and await the results of the Texas-Baylor and Nebraska-Colorado games to find out who they will face in the first round of the Big 12 Tournament. Even through we don't know who the Cowboy's opponent will be, we do know the game will take place at 11:30 on Wednesday in Kansas City... set the timer on your VCR.
Update: Looks like we get Nebraska in Round 1, so at least we get to see that huge Brazilian again. I am hoping to get some nice search traffic from "see that huge Brazilian".