Five Best Oklahoma Basketball 2015-16 Midseason Performances
By Chip Rouse
When you are 17-2 and ranked No. 1 in the nation, its tough to narrow down the five best performances in Oklahoma basketball halfway through what appears to be a magical season.
But we’ve done just that for you. How much fun has this sports year been? A football year in which the Sooners made it all the way to college football’s Final Four, only to be overshadowed, at least at the midpoint of the college season, by a basketball team that currently sits in the No. 1 position in the Associated Press Top 25. No small feat coming from a school that once crowed it was “building an institution that its football team could be proud of.”
The 2015-16 has so far been truly magical, fueled by a veteran team on which four starters have been on the floor together at the start of now 87 consecutive games over the past three seasons. As far as I know, no other Division I team can make that claim this season. It also helps to have arguably the best player in college basketball in Buddy Hield, the prohibitive favorite to cap off a phenomenal college career as the National Player of the Year, among your starting five.
Kansas outlasts Oklahoma in triple-overtime in a game between No. 1 and No. 2 in the country: There is really no question at the midseason point in the Sooners’ 2015-16 basketball schedule what game stands out as the most exciting. Hands down, the triple-overtime, nationally televised Monday game at Kansas was the winner, and could easily be the game of the year in the Big 12 at large. This even though then-No. 2 Oklahoma was on the losing end of the final score. Despite trailing most of the first half, the Sooners went on a 12-0 run to close out the first half and turn a 40-32 deficit into a 44-40 lead at the half. OU held onto the lead for over 16 minutes in the second half before Kansas fought back to knot the score at 72 with about three and a half minutes to go in regulation. That’s when the real fun began.
The Sooners had a chance to steal the game in regulation when a foul was called on the Jayhawks with just over two seconds remaining in regulation and sent OU’s Khadeem Lattin to the free-throw line. Lattin missed the front end of the one-and-one, however, sending the game into overtime. Back and forth the game went for three extra sessions before Kansas stole an inbounds pass from Buddy Hield, preserving a one-point Jayhawk lead with 12 seconds remaining in the third overtime.
Buddy Hield drops 46 points on Kansas in the triple-overtime loss to the Jayhawks: The Big 12’s top scorer for a second consecutive season has already had seven 30-point games this season – only two other Big 12 players have had more than two games of 30 points or more so far this year. But he was absolutely on fire in the Kansas game. Scoring 46 points on 13-for-23 shooting, including eight three-pointers, before a nationally televised audience, Hield will be able to look back on this incredible shooting display as the moment in the season that separated the four-year Oklahoma starter from everyone else in the competition for National Player of the Year. Oh, and by the way, he made 12 of 14 from the free-throw line and pulled down eight rebounds playing 54 of the 55 total minutes in the game.
Ryan Spangler’s six double-doubles: The 6-8 Sooner senior has been an unsung hero in the OU starting five for the past three seasons. Spangler, who played his freshman season at Gonzaga, a long way from his home state of Oklahoma, has been a fixture in the Sooner starting lineup through 87 consecutive starts over the past three seasons. This is shaping up as his finest season in an OU uniform. The native Oklahoman has six double-doubles this season in rebounding and scoring.
Two games in particular stand out this season for Spangler. In a 17-point win over Wisconsin, which made it all the way to the national championship game last season, Spangler contributed 20 points and pulled down 14 rebounds, and he had a second 20-point game in an important win over Iowa State in the Sooners’ conference opener and added 12 boards.
Spangler’s best performance in the first half, however, may have come against Kansas. Just two days after the win over Iowa State, Spangler scored 14 points and had 18 rebounds against the Jayhawks. Spangler tends to show up big in the bigger games, and that is a very good sign for the Sooners moving forward toward the postseason.
Sooners rout top-10-ranked Villanova on a neutral court: Much was expected of this year’s Oklahoma men’s basketball team, largely because of the return of four starters, including the reigning Big 12 Player of the Year in Buddy Hield. Not everyone among the experts in college basketball, however, was on board regarding how high and how far this OU team could go this season. That was, until the Sooners blew out a very good top-10-ranked Villanova team by 23 points in the Pearl Harbor Invitation in Hawaii. OU held Villanova to 31-percent shooting from the field and 12 percent on just 4 of 32 from beyond the three-point arc.
Dead-eye three-point shooting: Perhaps the biggest highlight in the Sooners’ season at the halfway point is the show they are putting on 19-feet from the basket. The Sooners as a team are shooting an incredible 47 percent from three-point range, led by Jordan Woodard and Buddy Hield, who sit No. 1 and 2 in the country in three-point percentage, both over 50 percent. Thirteen time in 19 games this season, Oklahoma has made at least 10 treys in a game, including a season high 17 in a loss at Iowa State. Only twice in the past 20 years have the Sooners shot better than 46 percent in total field-goal attempts for an entire season. The school record for three-point field-goal percentage is 41 percent in 1986-87.