Following the Sooners' 21-point loss to Texas A&M on Wednesday, one thing is obvious: If Oklahoma is going to contend in the NCAA tournament this season, the Sooners can no longer rely solely on senior guard Danielle Robinson to score all the points.

The Big 12 Conference is just too good for a team to ride on one person to the Big Dance, not to mention the rest of the league.

That fact was evident in Baylor’s annihilation of OU in Waco, Texas, last week. Without help from the rest of the crimson field, OU cannot contend with potent offenses like No. 1 Baylor and No. 6 A&M. And those are the types of teams OU coach Sherri Coale and her team will see come March.

Miss-handled layups, botched free-throw attempts and failed 3-point looks plagued a Sooner team that is struggling to find its identity in the waning half of the 2010-11 schedule.

Robinson plays like a top player in the country, including her 24 team-leading points against A&M on Wednesday, but the All-American can’t be in five places at once on the court.

Seven different Sooners have acted as rebound game-leaders this year, and without a dominant post presence under the basket, the Sooners have been forced several times this season to take those extra steps beyond the arc to spread the suffocating defenses.

The Sooners were 4-for-20 from the perimeter Wednesday night, hardly a factor to redistribute A&M's tough defense on the hardwood.

Freshman guard Aaryn Ellenberg led the Sooners against A&M, going 3-for-8 from 3-point land, something the newcomer has been doing all season. But where are the other Sooners that also have the range to make a difference with the 3s?

Since guard Whitney Hand’s return to the Sooner lineup in January, the redshirt sophomore is 22-of-68 in 3-point shots while averaging over 35 minutes per game this year. As a freshman, Hand finished the season shooting 37 percent from the 3-point line and averaged 9.2 points per game.

But Hand only collected three points in the loss to A&M, non-existent to Aggie guard Sydney Carter and forward Danielle Adams' unstoppable scoring duo.

The Sooners cannot afford for Hand to continue to produce such low offensive performances through the rest of the Big 12 games if they want to maintain their No. 3 conference standing.

Freshman guard Morgan Hook has also dropped off the 3-point radar after collecting a 14-of-22 3-point streak earlier in December. Since Big 12 play, Hook has been absent from the 3-point conversation, shooting a measly 26 percent in 3s through nine conference games this year.

Hook isn’t mentioned in the top 15 of the conference 3-point stat lists, something that factored into her Freshman Player of the Week award on Dec. 13.

OU has one chance to fix its mistakes against Missouri on Saturday in Norman before getting set to take on No. 2 Connecticut on Valentines Day in Hartford, Conn.

— Tobi Neidy, public relations senior