Oklahoma and Cal State Bakersfield will be facing off for their first head-to-head game in recent seasons.
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You’ll have to judge if this qualifies as bulletin board material, but Cal State Bakersfield center Aly Ahmed gave an interesting answer Thursday to my question: “What do you have to do to beat Oklahoma tomorrow?”
Hield is the first OU basketball player to be on the cover of Sports Illustrated since Blake Griffin in March of 2009. The Roadrunners played just one team in the Top 50 of the RPI this season, a game where they were torched 94-59 by Saint Mary’s.
As for their opponent, Cal State Bakersfield has a SU record of 24-8 and an ATS record of 11-3. “He definitely takes a lot of shots”. “I guess quality of schedule – you’re in the Big 12, you have a good start right there, playing against a lot of ranked teams night in and night out”. “We’ve got to line up and play”.
He can score from all over the court and is unlike any player Bakersfield has faced this season in the Western Athletic Conference.
“I just think if we’re us and the scrappy, annoying team that we are, and we get after it on the defensive end, that’s our best chance of winning this game”, Mays said. He had scored at least 12 points in every previous game this season.
“Our bigs have to go to work in there when we do get the ball”, Sooners forward Ryan Spangler said.
“I think West Virginia did a great job of denying him the basketball, face guarding him a lot”, Barnes said. I think that is kind of dependent upon matchups.
“They’ve got five guys in double-figures”.
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For a while, any win was something to celebrate at Oklahoma, which went 27-36 combined in the two years before Kruger took over in 2011.
