Big 12 Tournament Preview: Bedlam Round 3

With their huge win over Kansas on Saturday, the Cowboys secured the No. 8 seed in the Big 12 Tournament and will be matched up with No. 9-seeded Oklahoma for the third time this season.

Here’s how to tune in.

• When: Wednesday, March 7 at 6 p.m.
• Where: Sprint Center, Kansas City, Missouri
• TV: ESPNU (Dave Flemming, Robbie Hummel, Kris Budden)
• Webcast: ESPN3.com or ESPN app
• Radio: Cowboy Radio Network (Dave Hunziker and John Holcomb)
• Satellite Radio: Sirius 145, XM 199

This is not the same Sooner team that Oklahoma State upset in Stillwater all the way back on January 20. That all-timer inside Gallagher-Iba Arena dealt the Sooners their first back-to-back loss of the season. Since then, OU has gone 4-8 and unraveled like few teams in recent memory.

You’ve got one team that has been consistently up and down all season facing another that has been consistently down over the last month.

Let’s view that matchup through the lens of KenPom’s Four Factors.

Offense

It’s interesting to see how far this Sooner team has fallen off statistically in just over a month. You can look at all the numbers here, but the one that sticks out to me most is their effective field goal percentage which went from a stellar 57.6 percent (13th nationally) to the 54.1 percent listed above.

Three and a half percentage points may not seem like a ton, and any team’s numbers are going to decline as they continue to face stiff competition — especially the Big 12’s gauntlet. But during the same span, OSU’s EFG% has dipped just 0.3 percent from 51.0. And the Cowboys are hardly the poster children for offensive consistency.

The easiest thing to point to is the trajectory of Trae Young, who has come back to Earth after looking like a rich man’s Steph Curry through the first three months of the season. The obvious choice for National Player of the Year has been frustrated both visibly and in the stat sheet and has shot better than 35 percent from the field just four times since the two teams met in Stillwater January 20.

Three of those were three of OU’s four wins during that time.

Defense

One thing that has remained constant through the season for Oklahoma has been its defense. It’s been consistently bad. Oklahoma has owned the last-place spot in the Big 12 in scoring defense for most of the year and their 82 points per game allowed ranks 337th out of 351 teams.

The Cowboys best offense has always been in transition off of turnovers and by earning extra scoring opportunities off of offensive rebounding. Those will be key on Wednesday night.

Keep an Eye On: Trae Young

Who else? The weakness of this Sooner team is its overwhelming dependence on Young, who leads the nation in percentage of possessions used. That means that 39 percent (!) of OU’s possessions end with a made shot, missed shot that isn’t rebounded or turnover by Young. If Oklahoma State can ensure that the rest of the Sooners are relegated to second and third fiddle and pressure and bother Young, than the Pokes have won half the battle.

Both that weakness can also be a strength, as we saw several times, especially early in the year. And Trae Young can still go full Trae Young on you. If that happens, so be it. But you give yourself a chance if he has to use 39 shots to score his 48 instead of getting the Brady Maneks or Christian Jameses involved and keeps a defense honest.

Key for OSU: Attack, Attack, Attack

Everything begins and ends with Young. While he carries the scoring burden for his team, he is often switched off of the ball on defense, especially against bigger point guards. If the Cowboys can get Kendall Smith switched on to Young, or attack him with Brandon Averette or Jeff Carroll, at times, that may pay off down the stretch.

Smith has been the Cowboys’ best offensive option during the second half of the season. He’s their best guy at creating offense when a play breaks down, and we’ve seen him show up big in big games.

With the Cowboys desperately needing a win to switch the conversation from RPI teams in the 300s to ‘How did Big 12 get nine teams in the bracket?’, there won’t been a bigger game all year.

Outlook

KenPom gives the Pokes a 45-percent chance of coming out on top and moving on to Kansas with a chance to go 3-0 against the Big 12 champs. I tend to lean the other way.

I think these two teams are trending in opposite directions. One team has seemed like it’s checked out for good chunks of the last month, and the other has been scrappy time and time again with its back against the wall. I’d give the edge to the Cowboys in Kansas City.