Pregaming – OU

Teams: Oklahoma State (15-7, 3-5) vs. OU (12-9, 4-3)

For entertainment purposes
The 12:30 tip from GIA will be shown on the Big 12 network and on ESPN3 for my “I can’t be without my twitter/email/iTunes for more than 20 minutes” readers. Neither team is ranked in the AP (for obvious reasons) but OSU garners a #78 ranking from Pomeroy compared to OU’s #121. A few sites have no line on the game right now (I have no idea why) but I’ve also seen OSU at -8 which seems a little high to me when you consider OU has won four straight. OSU is 10-1 at home and OU 1-4 on the road so make your wagers accordingly.

Behind enemy lines
Crimson and Cream Machine (what kind of name is that by the way?)

Homework
Well about two weeks ago this seemed like one of those “hey, let’s get Markel, Shaw, and some of the other young guys some quality PT in the second half” games. Not so much anymore. The Sooners started off fairly slowly this season, losing five straight non-conference games at one point including a 68-64 contest to Chaminade in Hawaii. But they’re coming off their biggest win of the year, a 73-66 victory over Baylor on Wednesday, and semi-streaking into Stillwater.

OU’s team is built similarly to OSU’s in that most of their production comes from a guard/swingman-oriented starting five, and they don’t have a truly dominant big man to speak of. They do have good guard size though — everybody in their starting lineup ranges from 6’2” to 6’8” with the majority being on the latter end of that. OSU needs to take the air out early from a team that’s gained a ton of confidence in the last 14 days, a team that caused Jeff Capel to say, “I’ve really enjoyed coaching [them], seeing how much better we’ve gotten, watching them believe in themselves.”

I hope he has to turn away on Saturday.

What I’m worried about
They don’t need a ton of points from their big guns to win. Of course when Cade Davis is one of your “big guns” you probably have bigger problems than point distribution, but still. Steven Pledger had 38 up in Hilton last week, Freshman Cameron Clark had 25 in the Baylor win, and point guard Carl Blair has 28 points and 10 assists in the last two games.

Two random stats that (probably) only interest me
Big 12 teams are 141-18 at home with half of those losses coming from Tech and Iowa St.

Keiton and Cory Higgins are in a crazy tight race for the FT % crown in the Big 12. Keiton is 90-99 for a .909 mark and Higgins is 105-117 for a .897 spot. I know you’ve been dying to know who’s in the mix for the Big 12 FT % race and that’s what we’re here for. Hard hitting as you’ve come to expect, I break it down like nobody else.

Video to get you ready
So many things here. First, how about “skinny” Robert Allen doing the sports desk? Next, I was at this game, I think I was like four years old and I was scared to death. I’d never seen a fight before and this was an all-timer, it starts off kind of slow but when Bobby Purna took Darren Cox into the corner of the dugout the crowd just lost it. It was a crazy scene, I should probably turn this into a post of its own at some point…