Sooners’ big men struggling inside

MANHATTAN, KAN. — With about 13 minutes remaining in Tuesday’s game at Kansas State, Oklahoma point guard Trae

Young flicked his wrist and sent the ball inside to

Jamuni McNeace a few feet from the basket.

Instead of going up hard to the basket, McNeace pivoted and lofted a hook shot that bounced around the rim.

While Young struggled to find much of a rhythm at all in the game, its interior players once again failed to help much as the No. 4 Sooners fell to Kansas State 87-69 at Bramlage Coliseum.

Sooners’ big men

Khadeem Lattin and McNeace haven’t always been able to finish when Young finds them close to the basket.

Tuesday night, the pair combined for just four points.

“We’ve got to keep working on that because that’s an area we need to improve in,” Sooners coach

Lon Kruger said Monday. “We need to take a look at our points and rebounds out of that five spot. Obviously it’s pretty good, but we think that’s an area we can get more just from the standpoint of finishing at a higher rate to start with.”

The Sooners spent plenty of time in practice Sunday and Monday focusing on finishing at the rim.

Stoppages slow second half

A pair of stoppages in the second half pushed the game significantly longer.

First, with 12:20 remaining, after Young made a layup, Oklahoma’s freshman point guard caught Kansas State’s Xavier Sneed in the eye with his finger.

Officials went to the monitor to review for a potential flagrant foul but ruled that none was warranted and the game continued.

Less than 30 seconds later, though, there was a longer delay after both the game clock and the shot clock stopped working.

The issue took several minutes to fix and eventually 12 seconds was taken off both clocks.

Up next: Bedlam

The Sooners wrap up their Bedlam series much earlier than usual this season when they travel to Stillwater to face Oklahoma State at 1 p.m. Saturday (ESPN).