If you're a regular reader you know two things about me: 1) to the bewilderment of many, I wasn't high on J'Covan Brown 2) I was an early adopter of Lon Kruger's Oklahoma Sooners, who has recently been looking for a different bandwagon to hop on.
Well, to quote Biggie Smalls "Things done changed."
On J'Covan
I've watched quite a few Texas Longhorns games this season, and truthfully throughout JCB's career, but I've never seen him completely take over a game like he did in a loss to the Missouri Tigers this weekend. I know he is leading the Big 12 in scoring and that he poured in 35 against the Rhode Island Rams earlier this season, but during Saturday's game he was the only Longhorn who evidently took the trip to CoMO.
And let's be honest, Mizzou ain't Rhode Island. JCB was 10-16 from the field (6-7 from three) against a top 10 team... a top 10 team who knew that JCB was the only scorer on the floor. A top 10 team who couldn't find a defender to man him, trying Phil Pressey, Mike Dixon, Matt Pressey and Marcus Denmon on him. This was literally a legendary performance, overshadowed, and probably eventually forgotten, because the Horns lost the game.
Well, I'm not forgetting this and have boarded the JCB bandwagon, assuming there was still room for me.
On Oklahoma
I had Oklahoma figured out, then I didn't. Now I do. I feel like picking peddles off a flower "she loves me, she loves me not."
For the non-conference part of the schedule, Oklahoma was my underdog darling. Picked near the bottom of the conference by most media (including Big 12 Hoops), their 10-2 noncon record impressed me. Their loss to SLU was understandable, though the Cincy loss did have me scratching my head heading into conference play.
Then a brutal start... 38 point defeat at Mizzou, narrow-ish loss hosting KU then a sluggish loss in a Stillwater Bedlam game. So maybe Saturday's defeat over visiting K-State was an anomaly, or maybe they were who I thought they were, getting well-rounded performances from Andrew Fitzgerald (21 pts), Steven Pledger and Romero Osby (18 each).
In college basketball a coach means almost more to a team than the players on the floor, and we all know Kruger can coach. I thought that OU would be able to use size and a fashioned offense to match their skill set to upend some teams, and that showed on Saturday. They are now in the midst of an easier run, hosting Tech before traveling to A&M, so they could conceivably be 3-3 before a brutal run of hosting Baylor then at K-State and at KU.
Either way, choo-choo, I'm back on OU's bandwagon.
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