The Oklahoma Sooners entered the season ranked sixth in the country behind only UConn, South Carolina, UCLA, Texas, and LSU. By now, the Sooners dropped to thirteenth and don’t look like much of a match for the top teams in the country. Conference play has been rough. Oklahoma started out strong with wins against Texas A&M and Mississippi State, but then faltered against ranked opponents. The Sooners lost to Ole Miss, Kentucky, and LSU.
Head coach Jennie Baranczyk didn’t mince her words after her team’s 91-72 loss to LSU.
“We don’t box out, and we’re exposed, and we refuse to do those little things that we have to be able to do,” she said in her postgame media availability. “And so we got to be able to learn that, and they are really good at that. But also if we don’t do that in this league, we’re not going anywhere.”
This isn’t the first time Baranczyk addressed her team’s need to learn from the challenges the SEC poses. After the loss to Ole Miss, she called out her team’s lack of physicality, especially at the guard spots.
With a 2-3 record, Oklahoma is currently tenth in the SEC. Battling their way up the standings will be a tall task for the Sooners. They still have games against South Carolina, Texas, Vanderbilt, Alabama, and Tennessee coming up. That’s three games against a top-five team, including one of the last undefeated teams. The margin of error in those games will be incredibly small.
The Sooners have a young roster
Nine players on Baranczyk’s roster average at least eleven minutes per game. Out of those nine players, three are freshmen (Aaliyah Chavez, Kaziah Lofton, and Brooklyn Stewart) and two are sophomores (Caya Smith and Zya Vann). Chavez actually leads the team in minutes. She is also the team’s leading scorer and second-leading playmaker. Her 3.2 turnovers per game and low field-goal percentage encapsulate her youth and inexperience in the NCAA.
The SEC is stacked with ranked teams and poses a tough challenge for teams that don’t have much experience playing together or against this kind of competition.
Baranczyk also acknowledged her team’s youth after the loss to LSU. “I don’t think we’re doing a great job right now of really trying to set each other up. I do think part of that is youth trying to do the right thing and there’s time line in that, and so I think we’re trying to learn a lot but I’d like to see us have a little bit more trust and chemistry.”
While Reagan Beers, Beatrice Culliton, and Payton Verhulst are all seniors, the majority of Oklahoma’s roster will get a chance to play together for a few more seasons, barring any major departures via the transfer portal.