Kansas’ Allen Fieldhouse is one of the toughest road environments in college basketball.
No one knows this better than Oklahoma, which faces the No. 8 Jayhawks on Saturday in Lawrence, Kan.
The last time the Sooners won at Kansas, back in 1993, Billy Tubbs was coaching Oklahoma.
Kelvin Sampson never won there during his tenure with the Sooners. Neither did Jeff Capel or Lon Kruger. Oklahoma has lost 20 games in a row there.
Now, it’s Porter Moser’s turn to give it a try.
The Jayhawks (19-4, 8-2 Big 12) won’t be thinking much about their long history of success against the Sooners (14-10, 4-7), though, especially considering they are coming off a 79-76 loss at Texas on Monday.
“It definitely felt like we gave this one away,” Ochai Agbaji, Kansas’ leading scorer, said after that loss. “Everyone knows that feeling, too. Coach (Bill Self) knows that feeling.
“We just have to be mature and move on.”
Even with that loss, Kansas remains atop the Big 12 standings, just ahead of Baylor entering Saturday’s action.
Saturday’s game is the start of a four-game stretch of unranked opponents for the Jayhawks, their longest during conference play. Kansas had played five consecutive games against ranked opponents.
In the first meeting of the season between the teams, Kansas’ Christian Braun hit a tiebreaking 3-pointer with 10.9 seconds left to lift the Jayhawks to a 67-64 win over the Sooners.
After that game, Moser said Kansas’ success was a blueprint as he works to build the program at Oklahoma.
“You can’t forget how this feels because this is where we want to go,” Moser said then. “We want to win these games.”
Three-point shooting figures to be a major factor Saturday.
Both teams are among the top four in the Big 12 in both 3-point shooting and 3-point defense.
In the first game, that fell heavily on the Jayhawks’ side as Kansas was 8 of 17 from beyond the arc while Oklahoma was just 4 of 17.
They were each excellent defensively along the perimeter in their last game out, with Kansas holding Texas to just 3-of-20 shooting from beyond the arc and the Sooners keeping Texas Tech to 2-of-17 shooting in Wednesday’s 70-55 home upset of the No. 9 Red Raiders.
It was Texas’ worst 3-point shooting night in Big 12 play and Texas Tech’s worst overall of the season.
Wednesday’s win was Oklahoma’s first in five tries against top-10 opponents this season.
Now they’ll get another crack at it.
During his decade-long stint at Loyola-Chicago, coaching 329 games, Moser coached just six games against top 10 opponents — just four during the regular season — and now he’ll match that number in a span of just 12 games.
“We are playing elite teams,” Moser said. “Just stay with it. Every game is an opportunity.”
The win over Texas Tech snapped a three-game losing streak for the Sooners and was just their second win in nine games.
Kansas will be without guard Remy Martin for the fourth consecutive game due to a bone bruise on his right knee.
The Sooners are likely to be without backup point guard Bijan Cortes for the second consecutive game because of concussion protocol.
–Field Level Media