Kruger, Young say offense can improve
Although averaging nearly 95 points per game, coach Lon Kruger and star point guard Trae Young believe the Sooners can do better.
Oklahoma’s offense has raised eyebrows this basketball season.
The Sooners are averaging 94.4 points per game, second nationally.
Trae Young, their phenomenal freshman point guard, is not only leading the nation in scoring with 28.7 points per game but is also third in assists per game at 8.7.
So heading into Friday night’s game against No. 25 USC at Los Angeles’ Staples Center (9:30 p.m., ESPN2), it can be surprising to hear OU coach Lon Kruger, Young and his teammates talk about where the offense stands about a month into the season.
“I don’t think we’ve played our best, or near it,” Kruger said. “We can move it better. We can make shots better. It’s exciting in a way. We’d like to be playing better — making more shots — but we can certainly execute things better and we have to.”
Young’s big numbers have at times masked some of the deficiencies in the offense. He’s taken more than 26 percent of the Sooners’ shots this season and taken more than 40 percent of their free throws. According to Ken Pomeroy’s percentage of possessions used metric, Young is used on 37 percent of the Sooners’ possessions. That’s No. 3 in Division I and the tops among major conference players by a long shot. No other major conference player is used more than 33 percent of the time.
For Oklahoma, improving on an offense that has already been putting up numbers that are near the best in college basketball — only Virginia Tech has averaged more — rests on improving its shooting.
That includes Young, who has scored in chunks but feels like he can improve especially on his 37.9 percent 3-point shooting so far.
“To be honest, we’re not even knocking down the shots that we really should be making, so we could be leading the country in scoring just because we have such a good feel for each other on the offensive end,” Young said. “We got kind of stagnant in our last game but we still managed to put up 97 points. We’re good on the offensive end, but we’ve got a lot of things we can get better at.”
The Sooners are also still learning how to play with Young.
“I’m still trying to get a feel for him, just move to the right spots where he wants me to be,” Christian James said. “My shots are going to come. We just have to move the ball better.”
Now, the Sooners must be able to keep the offensive flow that has been a positive until the shots start falling.
That will come, Young insists, and Friday night would be a good place to start as the Sooners start a stretch of consecutive ranked teams and three of four games against teams that have been rated this season.
“We’re getting a lot of open shots,” Young said. “And we’re gonna be in games where it’s gonna feel like we’re not missing. We’re not hitting our shots right now, but that’s fine. We’re getting good shots, good open looks, and eventually they’re gonna start falling.”