Clay Horning
By Clay Horning
Transcript Sports Editor
DAYTON, Ohio — The Oklahoma women will meet the media at Dayton Arena today. They’ll be asked questions about themselves, about their opponents and about their season. Of course, they will be diplomatic.
The day before their arrival in the Buckeye State, they were given the opportunity to explain, all things being equal, why they might have advantages the other 15 teams still playing in the NCAA Tournament do not. They weren’t undiplomatic, but perhaps a little more forthcoming.
Numbers game
“Our depth,” Sooner coach Sherri Coale said. “Our quality depth.”
Surely, the rest of the teams still dancing love their personnel, but Coale may be right on with her evaluation.
Through two games, or 80 minutes of basketball, eight different Sooners have played at least 25 minutes.
Leah Rush and Jenna Plumley have played more than any other starter at 62 minutes. Chelsi Welch has played 49 off the bench and Ashley Paris has played 42 off the bench.
Mississippi — the Sooners’ Dayton Regional semifinal opponent at 1:30 p.m. Saturday — can almost make the same claim, with seven players going for half an hour through two games.
OU, however, is getting a lot more production off the bench than Sunday’s opponent. While Ole Miss has received 35 points and 10 rebounds off the pine through two games, the Sooners’ numbers are 53 and 35.
Momentum
Sooner shooting guard Erin Higgins is actually able to look at it from a pundit’s perspective. But why not? She’s living it.
“I look at the past five or six games,” she said. “Baylor (at home), I thought we played really well. And then you take the Big 12 tournament and I thought we sustained it, and then I thought we played well in Austin.”
The Sooners enter Sunday afternoon’s game on a 10-game winning streak, but Higgins is right about the more recent contests being the most impressive. The run has included two victories over Baylor, by 27 and 14 points, a Big 12 tourney title victory over Iowa State, which was itself on an eight-game winning streak and, after last week, NCAA Tournament victories by 14 and 31 points.
By comparison, Ole Miss has won two straight games, four of six, six of 10 and seven of 13. The Rebels best run of the season came during the early stages of the conference slate, when they began the SEC with six straight wins.
On the other side of the Dayton draw sits Tennessee, which has won two straight and 13 of 14, and Marist, which has won eight straight games, last losing at Loyola of Maryland on Feb. 16.
Skills game
It may be a repeat of the point Coale made, but freshman wing Amanda Thompson came to it a little differently.
“We have so many different talents,” she said. “We have shooters, we have posts, we have penetrators and we have rebounders.”
Indeed, the Sooners don’t just have a great deal of depth, but depth everywhere.
At the point, they’re three deep, and it was their third point guard, Britney Brown — not one of the players who has played 30 minutes in the tournament — who was partially responsible for OU puling away late in the first half against Marquette.
OU boasts 3-point threats in Higgins, Plumley and Rush, while both Brown and Kendra Moore are capable beyond the arc.
Even, arguably, the nation’s best player, Courtney Paris, has a solid back-up in twin sister Ashley.
“Both sisters had some serious production,” said Coale, after they combined for 32 points and 20 rebounds against Marquette.
As for the penetrators, all three point guards — Plumley, Moore, Brown — are capable, and lately Coale has continued to play Plumley and Moore together, seemingly doubling OU’s points of attack.
Of course …
The Sooners must still get it done on the court Sunday and, assuming victory, Tuesday. Because nobody enters the Sweet 16 struggling.
Everybody’s still playing for a reason.
Clay Horning
366-3526
cfhorning@normantranscript.com
