The Oklahoma Sooners were once thought to be a lock to be on the 1-line in the NCAA Tournament. We'd still guess that Oklahoma will end up there when push comes to shove, but after losing on Saturday in Austin, Tuesday night's game against the Baylor Bears at home suddenly looks a little scarier than we initially would've thought.
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SCHEDULING
The real question here is how Oklahoma is going to get off the mat after letting Texas go on a 22-0 run over almost seven minutes towards the end of the second half on Saturday. It was the worst stretch of the season for one of the best teams in America, and often times, runs like that end up crossing over games, especially when you talk about such a quick turnaround time for this game.
Baylor meanwhile, has to keep its eye on the prize as well. The Big XII season hasn't been good to the Bears, and though they know they're going to be dancing as well this year, there's a big difference between the 2-seed they'd top out at if they win these last two regular season games and play well in the Big XII Tournament and the No. 7 which is entirely possible if the end of the year goes badly.
KEY MATCHUP
When these two teams met in January, it was essentially the beginning of the end for Rico Gathers. He only played 22 minutes and took just two shots from the field. Now, he's hardly being used in a reserve role while Johnathan Motley plays in his place.
Motley only played 27 minutes in the first meeting, but he was the most effective player on the floor for the Bears, scoring 15 points to go with 10 boards, six of which came on the offensive end.
Live bettors should realize that the big run against Texas started because the Sooners stopped hitting the glass. They went -9 on the boards in that run, and the Longhorns had chance after chance at the hoop.
Motley, who has averaged 13.3 points and 6.0 rebounds per game since January 9, could be the same type of difference-maker in this one. Baylor is a good rebounding team as a whole because of the way that Lester Medford finds his way to the basketball in spite of the fact that he's the smallest man on the court, but Motley is the man who could make a big difference here against the Oklahoma bigs.
KEY STATS & TRENDS
Live bettors can't like what they saw out of the Sooners not named Buddy Hield on Saturday. Hield scored 33 points. The rest of the team made just nine shots from the field and scored 30. Oklahoma isn't having any success in live betting when it isn't getting contributions from really good role players like Isaiah Cousins, Jordan Woodard and Ryan Spangler. If these three aren't playing well, the Sooners are as good as dead.
OU's fall from grace has been huge, but it's tough to say there's a horrid loss in the bunch. The Sooners are just 3-4 SU and 2-5 ATS in their last seven, but outside of that opening loss to Kansas State by 11, the rest of the basketball teams which they've lost to have had tons to play for and are tourney-bound.
Baylor has played six of its last seven games past the total, though just as much of that has been about poor defense (75.4 points per game allowed) as good offense (77.3 points per game).
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