Oklahoma Basketball: Five Best Sooner Games in 2016-17 Season
By Chip Rouse
January 18 – Oklahoma 89, West Virginia 87, in Overtime
Let’s be honest, this is a game Oklahoma probably shouldn’t have won, but it did, anyway. No, that doesn’t make up for all the games the Sooners lost that they probably should have won, but it still is incredibly motivating to steal one like this every once in a while.
The Sooners came into their road contest at West Virginia fresh off of their first conference win, a 75-64 home victory over Texas Tech. West Virginia was ranked 7th in the country at the time this game was played in mid-January and the Mountaineers were playing at home, where they rarely lose under head coach Bob Huggins.
Things were going pretty much as expected, with West Virginia handling the Sooners with relative ease and leading by a comfortable 15 points at the nine-minute mark of the second half.
That’s when OU scoring and senior leader Jordan Woodard put the game on his shoulders and led the most impressive Sooner comeback of the entire season.
With Oklahoma trailing 66-51, Woodard and Kameron McGusty went to work. The Sooners went on a 26-11 run over the final nine minutes, tying the game at 77 on a last-second shot by Woodard that sent the game into overtime and left Mountaineer fans scratching their heads wondering what had just happened.
Freshman Kristian Doolittle made six of his 12 points in the game in the overtime session and Woodard hit two clutch field goals with under a minute remaining in OT to preserve the improbable win for the Sooners and hand West Virginia its first home loss of the season.