by Chicagojayfan » Fri Dec 01, 2023 8:28 am
Nice solid road win for the team and especially nice as a bounce back after the Colorado State game
The Big 3 all showed up and, in particular Trey and Baylor played really well, and much closer to their norm. Kalk missed some shots that he normally makes, but was disruptive on the offensive end and made good passes out of the doubles he saw
It was clearly a focus of the coaches to get Ashworth to look for more shots and he was very effective and carried us offensively to start the game. Best game he's had for us so far, and I think we'll see more offensive spurts like this from him as the coaches us him to make teams pay for how they defend Trey, Baylor and Kalk
- earlier in the thread Trifecta commented that we had too many people waiting to see what Alexander did, and I think that was very true. Especially when teams play that tough, physical D on Alexander, people need to be moving without the ball so we can make them pay - and it's not just them scoring, when teams overplay like that, Alexander might be free on the next pass
Miller looked to be suffering from the illness in the first half (he looked to me to be struggling to get up and down the court). Thankfully the matchups were better for Traudt tonight than they were against Colorado St, but getting Miller back to 100% will help (Hopefully by the NU game)
Mac didn't give too much to the Bench tonight and I can see why - we needed the bounce-back after the last game, and testing out bench combos during the first real road game of the year is a risky thing to do. But, either way, Traudt and Bello played a lot and King gave a solid few minutes as well.
First 10 minutes of the first half we didn't play very good D, but we locked down hard during the last 10 minutes, and played solid D in the second half. Offensively not as good in that second half, but I thought we saw productive outings for Alexander and Baylor in the second half in particular -- nice to see them scoring in so many different ways
Hard to complain too much about a first real road game where we put up 1.254 PPP vs 1 PPP while playing a B12 team. If Kalk finishes anywhere near his norm, this is a 20+ pt win, and while Okie State didn't start the season well, Thompson is back and their younger players will keep getting better (couple of their Frosh are developing quickly - Dailey in particular, I think)
Most importantly the team bounced back and Trey and Baylor had a big bounce back games that get them back on track
bonus quote from an Oklahoma State Board "I bet McDermott could make the Cowboys a good offensive team"