My quarter season analysis

[IronHorseSooner]

After the first seven games, here's what I seen for the Sooners:

Good:
1. Improving interior play: If Taj and Kevin keep it up, there will be nobody who can match up with them. They can also offset bad shooting nights by their ungodly rebounding.
2. Interior defense: This is why UT will NOT beat them. Taj and Kevin have hit their stride in this, and even Nate Carter will be a hard match-up.
3. Transition game: There are just so many good transition players on both offense and defense.

Needs Improvement:
1. SHOOTING!!!!!: Guys like TE, Neal, and Godbold need to take a day and do nothing but work on their outside shooting. If they do this, this is a Final Four team. The bigs need to work on FT shooting, in particular Kevin.
2. 3-Point defense: This will come. The team has big guards. This will be critical when they play WVU.
3. Starting Line-Up: Like I said in the preseason, I don't believe that Walker is the answer. He's a second team PG, not a starter. Taj, Kevin, and TE are starters. Between Godbold, Neal, Carter, and Johnson, there needs to be a decision. My gut feeling is that Neal will be in the starting line-up. I eventually think that Carter will be the other starter.

Shooting is always the last thing to come around. I really didn't think that they would beat 'Nova. However, if the Sooners can improve their shooting, they could run away and hide with the Big XII and will be a serious NC contender. Please discuss.

[william_brasky]

Next 3 games will tell us alot more about this squad.

[jkm, the stolen pifwafwi]

personally, i think erin higgins could start at the off-guard right now

[TheBigRedMachine]

I wish Scottie Reynolds was on the team this year.

[Salt City Sooner]

In fairness to Kevin, they did say on the telecast that he'd banged that elbow this week pretty good & that might've been a cause to his bad day at the FT line. He did come into the game 17 out of 22 there, so there could very well have been some merit to it. Taj is now at 72.5% from the line which is a considerable improvement from the 64% he hit last year so he's making strides there as well, although there is also room for improvement in his case too.

[chriscappel]

Haven't seen any games yet but the stats are looking decent

[NickZeppelin]

We need to shoot better I agree. And when Neal gets healthy we probably will. Neal is a great shooter. But it's obvious that injury is hurting his shot.

I love how the ball is moving right now. They are spreading the ball around getting the ball inside. If we keep doing that the open shots outside will go down. You shouldn't look your best this early in the season but I've seen enough to where I think this team will be hitting on all cilinders by conference time.

[oumartin]

I think this team plays a little soft...I'm sure everyone remembers that the final four team had some pretty well recruited players such as Hollis but they played blue collar and dove for every ball and were in your jock on defense.
seems we have missed the heart and hustle the last couple years and the defense has lagged behind too.
I'll take a bad shooting night if we would just lock up the other team on defense.

[NickZeppelin]

Soft isn't what I think of when seeing these guys play. You can't really judge that when Kelvin is playing his son for 7 minutes or Longar Longar and Chris Walker are getting big minutes. These guys won't play when conference season starts. But the starters and the guys in the rotation have all played hard.

[OUGreg723]

I wish Scottie Reynolds was on the team this year.

All in good time. All in good time.