Sooners grab a 21-point win over Central Arkansas

The Sooners took down the Central Arkansas Bears 87-66 in a game that was controlled by the Sooners from the jump. Sooners got out to an early 26-9 lead with 10 minutes to go in the first half. At the end of the first half, the Sooners held a 52-30 lead. With 8 minutes to go, Central Arkansas cut the lead to just 13 but in the end, the Sooners were too much and ended up going on another run to close out the game. Central Arkansas was not afraid to let it fly from three as they attempted 34 threes on the day, hitting only 11 of 34.

Senior forward Jacob Groves had a career-high 26 points on the day. Jacob Groves went 4-6 from behind the arc on the day and shot 10-13 from the field. Porter Moser talked about Jacob Groves’s impressive performance saying, “He’s got just an extreme confidence going right now in his game, you know what I love he missed his first one, and then it didn’t affect him he got a couple of easy ones inside than outside so he’s just playing with a lot of confidence, what I liked is that we had 21 assists he was spacing the floor and they were collapsing and our guys were finding him with good skip passes.”

Grant Sherfield continued his impressive play with 17 points. Sherfield, who has the second-best 3-point percentage in division 1, stayed hot from three going 3-5 today. Moser talked about Sherfield’s performance saying, “I thought grant really got the pace going again they were really jumping and trapping him early and he didn’t force it he got it out of the trap and that was leading to some baskets.” Aside from the 3 turnovers, Tanner Groves played well notching 14 points and 7 rebounds.

True Freshman Otega Oweh played his best game of the year with 10 points and 3 steals. Oweh went a perfect 5-5 from the field and carved himself out some more minutes. Moser talked about Oweh’s impressive performance saying, “Otega really gave us great energy they had a couple of transition baskets I called a timeout and wasn’t happy and I thought Otega got some steals and plug and position he got his athleticism into the game… you just felt his athleticism in the game.” CJ Noland went 2-3 from three and had 8 points. It was very encouraging to see Noland get going a bit. Sam Godwin continued to play solid scoring 8 points while going 4-5 from the field.

Milos Uzan did not score today, but he did tally 9 assists here is what Porter Moser had to say about Uzan’s game, “It tells me he’s tough to cause what you guys didn’t know is that he turned his ankle this week and he played 80% today and when he went down we thought it was going to be long term it really was one of those screams in practice and you could hear a pin drop… he rolled that ankle and last two days he’s been icing it and trying to get that thing going so for him to come out and still have 9 assists 2 turnovers so I thought he did a good job with that.”

Sophomore Yaya Keita did not play today and true freshman Benny Schroder also did not play. Moser gave an update on the two of them saying, “Yaya is out for the year he will have to have surgery on his shin, Benny is just a grade one ankle sprain so he is short term Yaya is long term.”

The Sooners will next take on the 7-4 Florida Gators in Charlotte Tuesday at 8:30 PM. After that, the Big 12 gauntlet begins. Moser talked about the Florida game and the rest of their tough schedule saying, “Our last two non-conference games are Florida and Alabama, and then you got the big 12 so it’s probably 20 straight quad 1 or 2 games and to get more guys some minutes tonight just gives you confidence heading into this grind and we got a quick turnaround against Florida we leave tomorrow we gotta get our hands around Florida and they’ve had all week off, lovely.”

Cover photo credits to Soonersports.com