Sooners get a good draw
OU’s No. 6 seed is a very good draw for the Sooners. Look at it this way. At the end of the day, there wasn’t a dime’s worth of difference in the Big 12 standings between Kansas State, OU, Baylor and Texas A&M, which were seeded 3-4-5-6 in the Big 12 Tournament. KSU finished 10-6 in conference, but the others were 9-7, and KSU had the easier road because it was in the North.
Yet the NCAA seeds for those Big 12 teams were: 6-OU; 8-A&M; 11-Kansas State; 11-Baylor.
The reason is clear. Non-conference schedule. The Sooners in non-conference beat Gonzaga at the Ford Center, Arkansas at Lloyd Noble Center and West Virginia in Charleston, W.Va. They also lost to Memphis in New York, USC in Los Angeles and Stephen F. Austin in Norman. SFA turned out to be a solid team, which means that wasn’t a bad loss. A tough schedule carried the Sooners.
As for the seed, though, OU isn’t much better off. Here are the opponents of the Big 12 quartet below Kansas and Texas: Purdue, USC, BYU and St. Joseph’s. You’d probably rather draw Brigham Young or St. Joe’s, but any more, a 6-11 matchup is about as much a tossup as the 7-10 and 8-9 draws.
If the Sooners survive St. Joe’s, Louisville almost surely awaits, and there’s nothing easy about that. I would rank Louisville the best of the 3-seeds (Xavier, Stanford and Wisconsin are the others). Very, very tough matchup for OU.
But that’s what the NCAA Tournament is all about. Tough matchups.
-------------Berry Tramel can be heard Monday through Friday from 4:40-5:20 p.m. on The Sports Animal radio network, including AM-640 and FM-98.1. You can e-mail him here and follow him on Twitter @BerryTramel. Visit Berry's website here.
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I’m so happy that they made the tourney. But, let’s face it, they really don’t have any chance without some of those knotheads making some jump shots. Should be interesting also to see who guards the 6-10 Calathes guy who can really shoot the 3?
We can’t guard guys our size, let alone someone that big.