OU Basketball: Oklahoma Drops Big 12 Heartbreaker to Iowa State
NORMAN — Oklahoma once again suffered another gut punch in the final minute of a Big 12 contest Wednesday night.
Hosting the No. 25-ranked Iowa State Cyclones, the Sooners were presented with plenty of opportunities to win the game late, but ultimately fell 63-60 at the Lloyd Noble Center.
“In my head I keep echoing,” OU coach Porter Moser said after the game. “I mention the word inches, I'm hearing Al Pacino talk about finding that inch. Two games in a row we've got to find an inch.
“… I can just hear, 'you've got to find that inch.' That's what we've got to keep pushing for that inch. We've got to keep pushing.”
Neither team led by more than five points in the entire second half, and the contest went down to the wire.
Freshman Milos Uzan drew the game level with 1:03 left on the clock.
With four seconds left on the shot clock, Uzan worked to his left, kissing a pull-up jumper off the glass to narrowly beat the buzzer and knot the contest up at 56-56.
Tamin Lipsey put the Cyclones back up by two with a quick bucket on the other end, but Bijan Cortes again pulled the game square for the Sooners with a runner after driving to his right.
On the other end, Lipsey drained a triple to put Iowa State up 61-58 with 33 seconds left, heaping the pressure back on Oklahoma.
After a disjoint possession, Uzan was again left alone at the top of the arc, but he missed his attempt from deep.
OU forward Jalen Hill was there to tip the ball in, however, pulling the Sooner within a point with 16 seconds left.
On the ensuing inbounds play, Iowa State guard Caleb Grill clattered to the floor and spilled the ball out of bounds, giving OU 7.5 seconds to win the game.
But the Sooners flubbed their chance to get the ball in play as well.
Hill sealed his man in the lane, but Cortes was unable to loft the ball over the top and into Hill’s hands to lay the ball in and take the lead.
“They put their 6-10 kid with 7-4 wingspan on the ball,” Moser said. “… Very hard for Bijan to see it. I told Bijan, 'that's not your fault.' We had no timeouts. Very hard to see.
“… Jalen usually comes up with those.”
Hill took responsibility for the play, maintaining it was his job to come down with the ball.
“ I've got to come down with the ball and find a way to get the ball and just get a bucket at that point or get fouled,” he said. “… That’s all on me.”
Osun Osunniyi sunk a pair of free throws to ice the game for the Cyclones with five seconds left, as Tanner Groves’ desperation 3-pointer at the buzzer landed off the mark.
The gut-wrenching loss was setup by a massive first half comeback
Oklahoma’s night looked done a quick eight and a half minutes into Wednesday night’s Big 12 battle.
Guard Grant Sherfield checked out of the game with a pair of fouls with the visitors up 19-5.
But underclassmen guards Bijan Cortes, C.J. Noland and Uzan came alive to lead a ferocious comeback.
The trio combined to score 13 points to help the Sooners storm on a 20-0 run, erasing an 18-point deficit to go into halftime tied 29-29.
“I thought the first half was a tale of two stories,” Moser said. “It was a story of one group defended as poor as a team that I've seen defend. And then we made some subs and we had some energy and then we flipped it, went on a 20-0 run.
“We got the ball out, the ball was moving. And I thought they showed tremendous resiliency being down 17 to fight. So I love the fight in our group.”
Cortes especially was effective, helping the Sooners initiate the offense with Sherfield on the bench.
“I came out there just kind of prepared. Just trying to win,” he said. “Bring whatever I can to the table to defense, offense, passing the ball. Just going in there being aggressive and doing the right thing.”
Out of the intermission, Oklahoma allowed Iowa State to build a quick five-point lead, meaning the Sooners had to play catch up virtually the entire half.
Jalen Hill and Tanner Groves carried most of the offensive weight for OU in the defensive grind, combining to score 20 of the team’s 31 points in the second half.
Allowing crucial offensive rebounds again proved to be the difference for Oklahoma.
The Cyclones pulled down 10 offensive boards, resetting and converting those opportunities into 14 second chance pointes on the night, dwarfing OU’s four second chance points.
Honing in on those details again proved to be the difference, and it’s something the Sooners have to turn around to get on the right side of the result in Big 12 play.
“In the second half, toward the end of the stretch, I think we (gave up) a little offensive rebound,” Cortes said. “We were playing great D. It's just little things, trying to shrink those little mistakes and trying to learn from those.
“Just staying aggressive the whole game and letting go of something we know we can win.”
Oklahoma will now hit the road for the first time in Big 12 play this season.
The Sooners will head to Lubbock on Saturday to take on the Texas Tech Red Raiders at 6 p.m., and the game will be broadcast on ESPN+.
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