On This Day in OU Hoops History: Without Tubbs, Wayman and Chucky Were Enough

Sooners coach missed the first NCAA Tournament win of his own era

Oklahoma’s 2020 college basketball season came to an unceremonious and premature end when the NCAA declared this year’s tournament would not be played due to measures intended to stop the Coronavirus pandemic.

The Sooners just might have assembled the kind of team — a Big Three scoring triumvirate and a collection of young, athletic talent — that could have possibly made a good postseason run.

This team’s resume will always be incomplete.

Instead of using three weeks this spring to witness OU basketball history, SI Sooners will relive it. From now until April 4 — the date that was supposed to be this year’s Final Four semifinals — we’ll look back on Oklahoma’s most memorable NCAA Tournament games from that date in history.

MARCH 18, 1983

(7) OU 71, (10) UAB 63

Billy Tubbs didn’t even get to enjoy Oklahoma’s first NCAA Tournament victory of the Billy Tubbs era.

While the Sooners took on UAB in the first round of the Mideast Regional in Evansville, Indiana, Tubbs lay in a Norman hospital bed.

Tubbs was struck by a car while jogging on Feb. 20, and missed the final seven games of the season with a skull fracture and a broken hip.

But interim coach Mike Newell, back in his home state of Indiana, was up to the task in the first round — even without starting point guard Bo Overton, who missed the game with an ankle sprain.

In just the Sooners’ third NCAA Tournament trip since WWII, Oklahoma leaned on Wayman Tisdale — who had just become the first freshman in history to earn first-team AP All-American honors.

“I feel like this is going to be different,” Tisdale said.

It was, as the Sooners played just six players.

Chucky Barnett scored 26 points on 10-of-17 shooting and Tisdale was 7-of-13 from the field for 17 points with eight rebounds.

OU, the No. 7 seed, came in with a 23-8 record and the No. 19 ranking, while UAB was 19-13 after winning the Sun Belt Conference behind Cliff Pruitt’s MVP performance.

The Sooners held just a 32-29 lead at halftime over 10th-seeded UAB and kept the lead in the second half to advance to a second-round game against home-favorite Indiana. 

OU tied the school record with its 24th win of the season, but the lack of depth against UAB might have been costly in a second-round loss to Isaiah Thomas and the Hoosiers.

David Little scored 10 points, and Charles Jones had nine points and 11 rebounds. Barnett, Little, Jones and replacement point guard Jan Pannell each played all 40 minutes.

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