Sooners emphasizing defense as season nears
Since returning from a summer trip to Australia and New Zealand, a big point of emphasis for Oklahoma has come on the defensive end of the floor.
It isn’t always the work that the players enjoy the most.
“It’s been tough having to sit down and guard for two hours every practice,” sophomore Kameron McGusty said Tuesday at Big 12 media day. “But it’s definitely going to help us in the long run.
“I feel like offensively, we’re going to fill it up. We’re going to be able to score with the best of them, no doubt. So if we get our defense down, it’s only going to translate into stops, and stops lead to winning games. We’re all in for it. We know we have to sacrifice that.”
The Sooners’ defensive improvement, coach Lon Kruger said, will determine how OU bounces back from last year’s 20-loss season.
“We really think that will determine where this club can end up,” Kruger said. “I think we’ll be able to push the ball. I think we’ve got some guys that can score, but we’ve got to genuinely guard. They’ve done a really good job.”
Women’s Big 12 Tournament returning to Kansas City
The Big 12 women are reuniting with the men.
Oklahoma City will continue to host the Women’s Big 12 Tournament through 2019, but the conference announced Tuesday that the event will shift back to Kansas City in 2020, running the same weekend as the men’s tournament.
The men and women had shared cities — and many fans — before separating for the 2013 season.
“We feel like there is a synergy between the men’s and women’s tournaments and the men’s and women’s crowds,” Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby said.
As previously in Kansas City, the women will play at Municipal Auditorium, which has undergone some $5 million in improvements to locker rooms, seating, video boards and the sound system.
A one-year agreement is in place, to coincide with the men’s agreement that extends through 2020. After that, it is assumed that the men and women will remain packaged together for future contracts.
Carroll ‘posterizes’ pick
When the coaches’ Big 12 Preseason Poll was released last week, revealing OSU at No. 10, the school’s media relations department couldn’t quite trumpet the news.
Instead, it got creative, with a video distributed through Twitter.
In the video, the conference news release is posted on a locker room bulletin board — with the headline changed from “Kansas Picked to Win 14th Straight Title” to “Cowboys Picked Tenth by Big 12 Coaches” — then ripped down and crumpled by senior guard Jeffrey Carroll. It was fun.
And real.
“I kind of knew before the news came out that we weren’t going to be picked the highest,” said Carroll, acknowledging perception of the loss of Jawun Evans, Phil Forte and Leyton Hammonds. “I also didn’t think we’d be picked dead-last either.
“It’s just motivation for me. Everybody in our locker room knows that it’s not going to happen, we’re not going to finish last.”
Coaches adjust to changing rules
This season, there’s another round of emphasis given and rule changes applied to free offensive players, including how much room stationary offensive players are given to move.
Players will be allowed a cylinder of space and defensive fouls are supposed to be called when there is contact inside of that space.
On the surface, that would appear to make things more difficult for a team like West Virginia, who emphasizes trapping defense.
“I’m all for offense,” Mountaineers coach Bob Huggins said. “I just don’t think you ought to be able to walk out of traps, which hopefully that gets addressed. I think the only thing that is a little bit alarming to be we act like there’s never going to be any contact. They’re too big. They’re too strong. They’re too fast and the court is too small for there not to be any contact.”
Huggins said he would try to be a “little smarter” with the way he coaches his defense to account for the rule changes that also involve how players defend in the restricted area under the basket.
RYAN ABER AND JOHN HELSLEY, STAFF WRITERS