The Oklahoma Sooners could be shorthanded on the eve of their biggest game of the year.
The stats of Tanner Groves, Jacob Groves and Bijan Cortes is still up in the air as the Sooners prepare to take on the No. 1-ranked Baylor Bears on Tuesday night, as OU head coach Porter Moser said the team will have to figure out tomorrow if they can give it a go.
“They're out of their five-day quarantine,” Moser said during a Zoom press conference on Monday. “(Sunday) we didn't practice, we walked through some stuff. We'll know more tomorrow. We've got more questions we've got to answer, but they're out of their five-day quarantine window and we'll know more tomorrow. That's all I can really give you right now.”
If Tanner Groves doesn’t return to the lineup, then Moser will have to turn to Ethan Chargois and Jalen Hill to fill the void down low, just as he did on OU’s 71-69 win over the Kansas State Wildcats on Saturday night.
Hill scored 10 points and pulled down eight rebounds, also dishing out one assist in 35 minutes of action against the Wildcats, and Chargois grabbed nine boards and doled out four assists, though he was limited to just 18 minutes on the floor due to foul trouble.
Working through Chargois’ foul troubles has been a recurring theme throughout OU’s season thus far, and without Groves, Chargois’ foul trouble forces Moser’s hand into a slightly different playing style.
“Ethan is a guy you can really play through,” Moser said after the victory over Kansas State on Saturday. “Him getting the foul trouble, we went small and then it was something we don’t do a lot.”
If the Sooners need to deploy Hill as a small-ball center, Moser said he has faith that Hill can get the job done, especially on the offensive end of the floor.
“He scores a lot of different ways,” Moser said on Dec. 31 ahead of OU’s contest with the Wildcats. “Transition, he's really worked on his shot. We've got total confidence in him stepping into his shot.
“… And he's a guy that doesn't press. His defense, his rebounding, whatever he can do. Sometimes when you get guys that haven't had a big scoring role, they're pressing to have a bigger scoring role. Well Jalen doesn't press about that and it's starting to come naturally to him. And that's been a key for him. He's not pressing and saying I gotta get this or I gotta do this, he's just playing.”
Hill credits Moser for the steps forward he’s taken in his offensive game so far this season, though he still wants to improve his ball security as the team pushes farther into the Big 12 slate.
“I feel like I’ve done really good so far in shots,” Hill said ahead of the Kansas State game. “Knocking those down, getting a bucket, making defenses respect me, working on bringing the ball up the court and working on my ball handling. Just improving day to day, my confidence.”
But as always, everything with Moser and this year’s OU squad comes down to getting the job done on defense.
As the Sooners potentially press forward without Groves, Chargois will have to find a way to stay on the court, something Moser said the coaching staff is still trying to work through with the athletic big.
“There's a lot of work we're doing with him,” Moser said on Monday. “Part of it is, you see we call it 'reach for the lights.' It's the verticality rule, is to get your arms behind your ear when you're going in and driving and the big goes over to help.
“Two of his fouls he came swiping down and you could see one, we showed him in the film yesterday, he came over and he wound up and swiped at the block and they called a foul. And if you go slow motion, you could maybe have a case that he missed everything. But it 100 percent looked like a foul.”
When he is able to stay on the floor, Chargois can be a difference maker for OU, and he even had great moments against the Wildcats on Saturday.
“I called him late that night and I said Ethan, you had nine rebounds,” Moser said. “We had 18 second-chance points and I think 11 of them came off of us offensive rebounds. He really did some good things – passing. He didn’t give us direct points but his minutes were good. We need more of them, especially when we’re down Tanner.”
Oklahoma will need Chargois to play his best if they hope to hang around in Waco, as the defending National Champions look even deeper this year despite losing pieces to the NBA.
The Sooners will get their crack at the No. 1-ranked Bears on Tuesday night. The game will tip-off at 6 p.m., and the contest will be broadcast on ESPN2.
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