Oklahoma Basketball: Six Shining Sooner Moments From 2015-16 Season
By Chip Rouse
Khadeem Lattin Comes up Big in Huge Sooner Win at West Virginia
Over a two-week period in February, Oklahoma lost three of four games and found itself headed to West Virginia, where the No. 10 Mountaineers had lost just once all season. The prognosis was not good for a Sooner team that had been struggling and knowing that West Virginia’s high-energy “Press Virginia” defensive pressure was among the best in all of college basketball.
The first half ended with Oklahoma clinging to a two-point 28-26 advantage, and there were a couple of lead swings in the early part of the second half before the Sooners started to take control of the game around the 14-minute mark.
West Virginia mounted a comeback, drawing even for a fifth time in the game at 52 apiece with 7:49 remaining in the game, but that was as close as the Mountaineers would get as Buddy Hield capped a 9-0 Oklahoma run with a dagger-in-the-heart three-point bomb that put the Sooners back on top by a count of 61-52.
Hield would end the game with 29 total points, most of them coming in the second half, and two other Sooners, Isaiah Cousins and Jordan Woodard also scored in double figures.
But the real difference maker in the game was 6-9 sophomore Khadeem Lattin, whose final stat line read six points, six blocked shots, three steals and a game- and season-high 13 rebounds.
From an offensive standpoint, Oklahoma would not have won this game without Hield’s 29 points, but Lattin’s monster effort on the defensive end was a huge factor in limiting West Virginia to just 33-percent shooting for the game and giving the Sooners a 48-37 rebounding advantage that proved to be the deciding factor in the outcome.
Next: Buddy Hield Puts Sooners on His Shoulders in Big 12 Tournament Win