The 16th-ranked OU men’s basketball team got off to a slow start Tuesday night against the Louisiana-Monroe Warhawks, and sophomore guard Willie Warren attributed the start to the previous day’s practice.

“The way you practice is the way you play,” Warren said. “Yesterday in practice we turned the ball over consistently and it showed up today in the game.”

Head Coach Jeff Capel echoed Warren’s statements, about practice, and expressed his displeasure with the intensity level of the team early on.

“We didn’t come out with the energy that we needed to come out with,” Capel said. “For what reason, I don’t know. It took us being down, and being punched in the mouth for us to start finally punching back.”

Shooting under 40 percent from the field and only scoring 27 points, the Sooners trailed during most of the first half. They took their first lead at 23-22, and kept it until the end of the half when they led 27-24.

Capel said the team let their poor shooting start affect their play in the game.

“I thought we got a little bit deflated when we weren’t making shots,” Capel said.

The four Sooner freshmen who played in the first half, forward Tiny Gallon, guard Tommy Mason-Griffin, guard Steven Pledger, and forward Andrew Fitzgerald, combined to shoot 1-8 from the field for three points. All of those points were scored by freshman forward Tiny Gallon.

Gallon struggled offensively in the game, scoring only three points. He did grab 10 rebounds, however. Coach Capel said that the team needed more production from the McDonalds All-American.

“Tiny has to do a better job of getting ready to play after halftime,” Capel said. “We need him to be better.”

Capel said he saw this game as a learning experience for his team, especially the young players.

“It is an important lesson for us, that you can’t just turn it off and on,” Capel said. “There are very few people in the world who are good enough to do that, and the people that can usually