That was about as ugly of a rock fight as you will ever see. We played as bad as we have all year and looked like the team that struggled on the road at South Florida in November. Even great teams are going to have nights where they play terribly though, particularly on the road. Most teams lose when they lay an egg, but our guys still found a way to survive. As poorly as we shot and passed the ball on offense, our guys never stopped playing incredibly hard. I think we saw tonight why this is Bruce's greatest team to date and that is because we are elite on D. Defense travels and it wins championships. We are going to beat everyone on our schedule left when we are playing great. The question we answered tonight is can we win playing as poorly as we can possibly play on offense. If we can play elite D every time out, we are going to give ourselves a chance to win every game.
@nrmorgan2001 said during the game at St Louis that "great" teams find a way to win tough games when lots of things are going wrong. @MattAU05 has pointed out how valuable it is for our team to get into serious trouble and learn to fight through it while still getting the W so it doesn't hurt our overall trajectory. Both of those things proved true once again tonight. It wasn't pretty, but our guys got out of that frozen hell hole with a W tonight and that's all that matters. Pretty funny to see the other teams are catching on to what happens after they take a loss to us...
Devan embodied the toughness and fight of this team tonight. He was fighting for rebounds like his life depended on it racking up 8 offensive boards. The front end of the 2 one and ones he missed hurt, but overall his play was critical to getting this W. Love that's he's almost always good for at least one monster slam off a lob once a game. He takes a lot of heat on here for his inconsistent play, but this was one W we would not have gotten without him.
KD was clearly the MVP for due to the way he closed this one out at the end and managing to put together a 17 point performance on a night our offense was off the charts bad. His last 2 buckets were absolutely ridiculous, particularly the one with 90 seconds to play where he got the and 1. KD is a closer who refuses to lose. I feel great about our chances in every game we play with a guy like KD who possess the skill and intangible toughness to take his game to another level when the game is one the line.
Mizzou did a nice job preventing us from running our pick and roll most of the game tonight to Walker. He missed some shots he normally makes, but he didn't get frustrated and just kept grinding away. Eventually, Mizzou's defense slacked and he was able to get free for a couple of big dunks off of lobs late that were critical to getting this W.
I feel bad for OU having to play us at home after this wake up call scare tonight. Our guys have 3 days to think about how they almost blew the #1 ranking they earned. I would bet money they come out clicking on all cylinders on Saturday and fired up to show the country again why they have that #1 is next to Auburn.
@nrmorgan2001 said during the game at St Louis that "great" teams find a way to win tough games when lots of things are going wrong. @MattAU05 has pointed out how valuable it is for our team to get into serious trouble and learn to fight through it while still getting the W so it doesn't hurt our overall trajectory. Both of those things proved true once again tonight. It wasn't pretty, but our guys got out of that frozen hell hole with a W tonight and that's all that matters. Pretty funny to see the other teams are catching on to what happens after they take a loss to us...
Devan embodied the toughness and fight of this team tonight. He was fighting for rebounds like his life depended on it racking up 8 offensive boards. The front end of the 2 one and ones he missed hurt, but overall his play was critical to getting this W. Love that's he's almost always good for at least one monster slam off a lob once a game. He takes a lot of heat on here for his inconsistent play, but this was one W we would not have gotten without him.
KD was clearly the MVP for due to the way he closed this one out at the end and managing to put together a 17 point performance on a night our offense was off the charts bad. His last 2 buckets were absolutely ridiculous, particularly the one with 90 seconds to play where he got the and 1. KD is a closer who refuses to lose. I feel great about our chances in every game we play with a guy like KD who possess the skill and intangible toughness to take his game to another level when the game is one the line.
Mizzou did a nice job preventing us from running our pick and roll most of the game tonight to Walker. He missed some shots he normally makes, but he didn't get frustrated and just kept grinding away. Eventually, Mizzou's defense slacked and he was able to get free for a couple of big dunks off of lobs late that were critical to getting this W.
I feel bad for OU having to play us at home after this wake up call scare tonight. Our guys have 3 days to think about how they almost blew the #1 ranking they earned. I would bet money they come out clicking on all cylinders on Saturday and fired up to show the country again why they have that #1 is next to Auburn.
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