Dream scenario for Sooners
If Oklahoma wants a blueprint for success this postseason, all the Sooners need to do is pull out the film of Thursday’s game against Kansas.
The Sooners throttled the Jayhawks 76-59 in the quarterfinals of the Big 12 women’s basketball tournament, and while Courtney Paris’s 27-point, 14-rebound performance will be all the talk, OU blew out Kansas because of its balance.
Great outside shooting and dominant inside play.
Paris was fabulous, enthusiastic and energized. She played inspired basketball, like a senior who realizes her college career is winding down. Heck, she kind of played like someone who’d promised to repay her entire scholarship if her team failed to win the national championship.
(More about that later on NewsOK.com and in the Saturday Oklahoman.)
But as Paris was quick to point out, she had a much easier time of it Friday because of what her teammates did. Amanda Thompson and Danielle Robinson hit a barrage of mid-range jumpers to start the game and continued to have hot hands, which opened up the inside.
Kansas was slow bringing the double-team on Paris, but that’s because the Jayhawks had to respect the Sooners’ outside game. That made Paris even more effective than she would’ve been otherwise.
Truth is, the way she was playing, she might’ve turned in a great performance even if her teammates weren’t so good.
But here’s another truth — the Sooners won’t be long for the NCAA Tournament without a similarly solid inside-outside punch. As the teams get better, they’ll be more and more capable of double-teaming Paris and making her life difficult. That doesn’t happen if Thompson, Robinson and Co. keep opponents honest.
It’s the dream scenario for the Sooners, an absolute nightmare for opponents.
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