Oklahoma Basketball: Five Best Sooner Games in 2016-17 Season
By Chip Rouse
February 27 – Kansas 73, Oklahoma 63
Oklahoma played a strong first half against 12-time defending Big 12 champion Kansas in the initial meeting of the season between the two schools. OU closed out the first 20 minutes on a 22-6 run to lead the Jayhawks by nine, 36-27, at the half.
The Jayhawks, however, came out on fire in the second half, scoring the first 13 points of the half to erase the Sooner halftime advantage and go up by four points. Kansas was never headed after that and went on to beat OU 81-70.
By the time the two teams met again in 2017, in Allen Fieldhouse in Lawrence, 11 games separated the Sooners and Jayhawks in the conference standings. Add to that the Jayhawks’ enormous winning percentage playing at home, where 16,000-plus fans are present every game, and on a day in which Kansas had just been elevated to the No. 1 spot in the land.
All the odds were heavily stacked against the Sooners, who are their most recent visit to Allen Fieldhouse, Oklahoma and Kansas engaged in a three-overtime thriller that the Jayhawks eventually won, 109-106, in a content in which Buddy Hield went off for 46 points and received a standing ovation from the highly partisan Jayhawk fans.
In the penultimate game of the 2016-17 regular season, Oklahoma and Kansas played to a surprising 28-all tie at the half. Unlike the earlier game this season between the Sooners and the Jayhawks, it was the Sooners who came out the stronger team in the second half.
By the 10-minute mark in the second half, Oklahoma was up by a dozen points, 54-42, and in position to pull off what might have been the biggest upset all season in college basketball. That was the point in the game, however, when the heavily favored Jayhawks began their closing kick to the finish line, a point Oklahoma has had great difficulty getting to in this disheartening season.
Over the next six minutes in the game, Kansas outscored the Sooners 25-6, wiping out the double-digit OU advantage and opening up a seven-point lead of its own.
Frank Mason III and Devonte Graham contributed 39 points to fuel the Kansas victory. Graham hit three successive clutch three-pointers during the Jayhawks’ impressive comeback.
In the end, this game ended up in the loss column for the Sooners, but it may have been their most impressive performance of the season, given the overwhelming odds against them coming into the game.