Jordan Woodard Elitist of the Elite Eight-Bound Sooners

It was Jordan Woodard, not Buddy Hield, who delivered the goods in Oklahoma’s 77-63 Sweet 16 victory over Texas A&M in the NCAA Tournament.

That is truly a good sign for the Sooners, but they will need that kind of a performance for a second consecutive game if they are going to get by the No. 1 seed Oregon Ducks in the West Regional championship game on Saturday.

Woodard led the way, exploding for 22 points on 8 of 11 shooting, including five of six from three-point range. The junior guard added five rebounds and two steals in recording his 26th double-digit scoring game and sixth contest of the season of 20 or more points.

For the first five minutes of Thursday night’s game, it looked as if Texas A&M was going to put Oklahoma in the rear-view mirror early as the Aggies ran out to a 13-6 advantage.

But that is where the A&M highlight film ended for the night. Just like that, the Sooners reeled off a 12-5 run to knot the score at 18-all, and followed that with another run of 27-8 to open up a commanding 45-26 halftime margin.

The Aggies made several futile attempts to get back into the game in the second half, but Oklahoma refused to let them back in, which was a refreshing development for a team that throughout the season had shown a tendency to allow opponents to come back from double-digit second-half deficits.

Not this time, though, and Oklahoma now moves on to its most difficult test of the tournament: a date with the Pac-12 champions, the Oregon Ducks, who just happen to be coached by OU head coach Lon Kruger’s former assistant at Kansas State, Dana Altman.

Things to know about the Sooners  sweet Sweet 16 triumph:

• Buddy Hield scored just 17 points in the Sooners 14-point NCAA Tournament win over Texas A&M, but his 26.7 scoring average in three tournament games is still above his 25.1 season average. Hield had 27 and 36 points in his two previous games.
• Hield’s 10 rebounds to go along with his 17 points gave him his first double-double of the season. He has six such games in his four-year collegiate career at Oklahoma.
• Oklahoma scored 32 points in the paint (10 each by Ryan Spangler and Khadeem Lattin), which is a notable accomplishment for a Sooner team largely defined by perimeter shooting and against a much bigger and longer Aggie team.
• The Sooners also got 16 points from their bench, 12 of which came from freshman Christian James, who buried four three-pointers in the game.
• Jordan Woodard and Christian James combined for nine of Oklahoma’s 11 three-pointers in the game. It is the 23rd time this season that the Sooners have recorded at least 10 three-pointers in a game, a new school record. The previous record  was 13 games with 10 or more three balls.
• The Sooners had 23 assists in the game, eight of them by Isaiah Cousins, their second highest total of the season. They had 29 in a game at Baylor in late January.
• Looking ahead: The Sooners are just one win away from a probable Final Four date with overall No. 1 seed and Big 12 champion Kansas. As a reminder, the last time the Sooners and Jayhawks met in a Final Four game was in 1988, when Oklahoma was the heavy favorite and, incidentally, had won its two regular season games with Danny Manning and Kansas that season. Sooners fans have still have not forgotten what happened in the national championship game that season. I’m sure Kansas fans haven’t, either.