NORMAN — In real life there isn’t a light bulb that suddenly fires up above someone’s head when an idea sinks in. If there were, Oklahoma’s practice gym would have been a little brighter this week.
Something former OU coach Jeff Capel tried to get the Sooners to understand for two years and something current coach Lon Kruger has emphasized from the opening practice has finally taken hold.
“I think as a group we’re putting everything together and understand how important it is to defend our hearts out,” forward Andrew Fitzgerald said.
Doing that was what led the Sooners (13-7, 3-5 Big 12) to their victory over Kansas State on Saturday. Doing it again is the only way they can build a winning streak when they face No. 8 Kansas (17-4, 7-1) at 8 tonight at Allen Fieldhouse in Lawrence, Kan.
Where the epiphany arrived goes back two weeks and two losses. The Sooners fell in overtime at Texas A&M on Jan. 14 despite leading most of the game. The reason OU didn’t get a critical road win that day was that it wasn’t tenacious enough to force the Aggies into shots they didn’t want to take. It was the same last week against Baylor. OU couldn’t get the stops it needed to make and suffered another tough loss.
It was then that a team started to understand that playing well also meant making the opponent struggle.
“Each day they understood a little more what they have to do to compete and get results in the Big 12,” Kruger said.
The result the Sooners became focused on was keeping opponents from scoring. They held Kansas State to 41.2 percent shooting and just 3 for 17 from 3-point range. Percentages like that on the defensive end win games.
Today will be OU’s second meeting with the Jayhawks. The first was a tight game at Lloyd Noble Center on Jan. 7, but he Sooners didn’t get many second-half stops in the 72-61 loss.
They believed they’ve learned the lesson.
“We have to defend them as hard as possible,” forward Romero Osby said. “They’re a good team. We feel like we can go in there and win. But we have to be able to slow the game down a little and just defend them well and make them do things they don’t want to do.”
It’s the key to winning tough games. It might have taken the Sooners two and a half years to really understand that, but the light has finally gone on. OU knows that in order to get a second straight upset victory, it has to execute on the offensive end and frustrate Kansas on the other end.
When it happens, it creates an emotion every coach craves.
“I think the guys now understand how they’re supposed to feel going into a ball game and coming out of a ball game,” Kruger said. “You want that feeling of exhaustion and satisfaction. When you blend those two together, it’s a great feeling.”
John Shinn 366-3536 jshinn@normantranscript.com
