Whether Christian James was instructed to do so or not remains unclear. But in a game filled with questionable decisions -- not to mention shots -- his signal to an official for a timeout with 7.4 seconds remaining Saturday might've been the worst.
Oklahoma was down two points at the time.
James had the ball.
So the smart thing would've been to simply toss it to Trae Young and let him fly up the court and into a scrambling defense that had spent the previous 24 minutes struggling to contain the freshman star. Win or lose, that was the play. But James instead called a timeout, which allowed Oklahoma State to take a breath and setup. The result was Young dealing with two, and at one point three, Cowboys on Oklahoma's final possession. He got a shot off, barely. But it never had a chance and missed badly. So the fourth-ranked Sooners lost 83-81 in OT. And now they're on a two-game losing streak -- and just 2-3 in their past five games.
Young was both amazing and awful.
He took 15 shots in the first half, missed 11 of them and finished the opening 20 minutes with 14 points and four turnovers, the last of which led to a 3-pointer at the other end that allowed Oklahoma State to take a 42-30 lead into the locker room. That was the awful. But Young scored 34 points on 24 shots in the subsequent 25 minutes to finish with a career-high 48 points and eight assists. That was the amazing, at least in moments. But he still gave the ball away too often and finished with seven turnovers.
Young has now turned the ball over 95 times in 18 games. And he's taking 30.9 percent of all of the shots Oklahoma is taking, which is higher than the 27.1 percent of shots Russell Westbrook took for Oklahoma City last season when he attempted 3.1 more shots per game than anybody else in the NBA.
So the question is simple: Can OU win at a high level playing this way?
I ask because it was obvious, in certain spots, that Oklahoma State's primary defense was to make Young deal with two people or give the ball away. Put simply, he wasn't great dealing with two people, and his teammates weren't great when he gave the ball away -- evidence being that Oklahoma players not named Trae Young finished 14-of-43 from the field and 2-of-15 from 3-point range. And that this came just four days after Kansas State hounded Young into missing 13 of 21 shots -- and committing a Big 12-record 12 turnovers -- in an 87-69 loss can't possibly be spun into anything other than a concern. To be clear, it's fine when Young is taking 20.6 shots per game and making 44.2 percent of them. Or taking 12.0 3-pointers per game and making 39.2 percent of them. Those are his season averages. But in the past two games he's taken an average of 30.0 shots and made just 36.7 percent of them. And he's taken an average of 15.0 3-pointers and made just 33.3 percent of them. The result has been two losses. So perhaps dialing it back, just a little, might be in everybody's best interests. But I'll let Lon Kruger figure that out.
No, it's not time to panic.
But it might be time for Oklahoma to adjust and counter what opposing defenses are doing. And it's also probably worth pointing out that the national perception of the Sooners was largely rooted in their December win at Wichita State. But how good does that win look now that Wichita State is a four-loss team with three losses to currently unranked opponents? Answer: Still good, obviously. But it's not what it was.
Oh, and Kansas is up next!
So all eyes will spend Tuesday focused on the Lloyd Noble Center -- where Oklahoma will either beat the Big 12-leading Jayhawks and temporarily quiet their skeptics or lose to the Jayhawks and take a three-game losing streak into next weekend's game at Alabama. No matter the result, what happens Tuesday is guaranteed to spark an interesting conversation. Because if there's one thing we know for sure about Young, at this point, it's that, for one reason or another, he's going to spark an interesting conversation.
