University of Oklahoma Athletics
University of Oklahoma
4-0,0-0Big 12
UTRGV
1-3,0-0WAC
Sooners Rout UTRGV 90-66
November 17, 2023 | Men's Basketball
NORMAN (AP) — John Hugley IV scored 16 points to lead three backups in double-figures scoring and Oklahoma defeated UT Rio Grande Valley 90-66 on Friday night.
Rivaldo Soares added 15 points, six rebounds, four assists and three steals for the Sooners and Le'Tre Darthard scored 13 as the OU bench scored 44 points. Two starters scored in double figures, Otega Oweh with 14 points and Javian McCollum with 11.
The Vaqueros led 19-16 and later the score was tied at 25 before Oklahoma scored the next 10 points en route to a 22-8 advantage over the final 8 1/2 minutes of the half. The Sooners led 47-33 at the break.
Oklahoma (4-0) led 62-52 with just under nine minutes left, then doubled its lead in the next five minutes.
Elijah Elliott scored 15 points for UT Rio Grande Valley (1-3). Hasan Abdul-Hakim and DeAnthony Tipler tallied 14 each.
QUOTES
Moser on improving after a win …
I'd rather learn to fix a lot of things from a win than to learn to fix a lot of things with a loss. The positive is the mentality that we have is we have eight starters. Look at our three guys off the bench. Rivaldo Soares, John Hugley IV and Le'Tre Darthard were 19 for 27 from the field. Having that kind of depth helps us so much. The second (thing) we've emphasized is offensive rebounding so much this year. We recruited more athletically. We got 47% of our offensive rebounds. That is back-to-back games that we've had so many more extra possessions.
Moser on defense creating offense and the defense tonight ...
It's going to be how we win games. You have got to eliminate ways to lose games. We got to eliminate 10 turnovers in the first half. We're trying to play faster but I thought today was the first time we were in a hurry. We made mistakes out of carelessness because we were trying to go so fast. I'm not going to not play fast because we did that. We just have to continue to learn and be simple playing fast. Make an easy play. We had a lot of careless turnovers. We have to eliminate those. You can win when your offense isn't good. You've got to keep guarding.
We had seven gaps. I've told you this before, a gap is when you get three stops in a row. We had seven of those. Every time we get seven or more, 90% of the games we have won. We got seven of those tonight. That was a positive, but when our offense isn't going, we're not shooting and we have a couple of guys not playing, how you usually overcome that is depth and defense. And our depth stepped up tonight. At times, we had good defense. We just fouled too much because of their speed.
