OUInsider - Owen Field

I dont think we have the depth or weapons that can offset adjustments made by the opponent.

Right now it's a lack of mental toughness. They don't believe in themselves and aren't leaning on each other to finish a tough one.

Truth? We aren't deep enough. We don't have enough talent to close out the deal. We beat Texas on THEIR court for 58 minutes....that's a good thing, but we didn't have the talent off the bench to sustain a lead. Defense too; I agree, but it's overall a lack of key talent. I think that will come under Kruger!!!

We have some coming in next year and he finally gets his FIRST real recruiting class this year.

There are various reasons in my opinion. I've refereed 100's of HS games and believe I understand basketball pretty well
- They don't have much depth and you get really tired playing almost 40 minutes. It's tough to maintain intensity when other teams are getting several breaks and the starters come back in fresh.
- OU really only has one solid ball handler in Grooms and other players get rattled under pressure.
- As has been pointed out, Pledger is the only outside threat. If the other team takes him out of the game, then OU struggles to generate any offense because teams pack it in and almost dare OU to take an outside shot from anyone except Pledger
- Pledger is a jump shooter who can't create a shot off the dribble. Really, the only player who can create a shot is Cameron Clark and he's inconsistent from the outside.
- Grooms is a decent ball handler and passer but is absolutely no threat offensively.
- Osby and Fitzgerald are decent inside. They're on the small side. Add Amath M'Baye next year and I think the front line can be a strength.
- College basketball is a guard's game and OU has too many issues in the backcourt to be consistent.

JMHO.

I would qualify that by saying in the past 5 years OU is seldom the more talented team. We went through a period where even when the Big 12 had more parity (Texas and OSU where excellent too) only Kansas consistently had more talent and we could sometimes beat them on our court and in the Big 12 tournament.

We have to get back to that parity. Although Texas, OSU and A$M are all down right now too.

I disagree. I think in order for this team to accomplish what they did this year with a limited bench took a lot of mental toughness. At some point no matter how tough you are mentally, if the other guy is better physically and has teammates that are better than your teammates, that guy wins. The mind can only accomplish so much in a physical game. It was frustrating to watch but I loved this teams work ethic. They will be much better next year. Remember this was a team with a new coaching staff and some new players, with just a few bullets in the gun. We can't also discount the departure of Calvin Newell.

We just aren't good enough, smart enough and have no depth.

I disagree. Take the Texas game for example, those players aren't better man for man than our team. I'll give them Brown, but their bigs aren't better than our bigs.

We controlled the game as we should have until the last few minutes. If you watched it, you would have seen how we lost it. We did not attack the glass and force toughness down the stretch. You have to want that win and how you do it is by imposing your will. Possession after possession we settled for bad shots or had ridiculous turnovers.

Despite our wins over weak opponents, this team isn't a tough enough team yet. It doesn't mean they aren't working to get there, it just means you don't cure mediocrity over night.

In most all competition, the mentally toughest team will win most matchups.