Oklahoma basketball: Sooners steal one on the road from No. 10 TCU
By Chip Rouse
Another ranked opponent goes down to the surging Oklahoma basketball team, number three this season.
Despite another masterful performance by the nation’s scoring leader, Trae Young. it looked for a good part of the second half that the Sooners were going to taste defeat for just the second time this season. Trailing by 13 points, 67-54, midway through the second half, Oklahoma outscored TCU 36-22 the rest of the way, with freshman superstar Young scoring 17 of his game-high 39 points down the stretch.
Young had 14 assists to go along with his 39 points, registering his seventh double-double of the season. He made 6 of 14 three-point shots.
With the 12th-ranked Sooners trailing by a single point, 89-88, and the game clock ticking down, Young was fouled on a drive to the basket with just over seven seconds to go and calmly knocked down two free throws that gave Oklahoma its first lead in the game since the 3:52 mark in the opening half.
Kenrich Williams, the high scorer for TCU with 22 points, missed a three-point attempt in the final seconds, sealing the win for the Sooners, their 11th of 2017-18, which ties their win total all of last season.
Oklahoma jumped out to an 11-0 advantage to start the game, with Young scoring eight of the first 11 points. A minute and a half later, TCU had cut the opening margin to just one point, and the game remained fairly close the remainder of the half, with the Horned Frogs taking a five-point lead, 46-41, into the break.
TCU stretched the lead out to double digits on a couple of occasions in the second half and threatened to put the game away before Oklahoma mounted its game-winning comeback.
Sophomore Kameron McGusty had a season-high 22 points and made several big shots down the stretch in the second-half OU comeback. Christian James contributed 10 points. Freshman Brady Manek, who had averaged 18 points in his last three games, had just two points on Saturday, but pulled down a game-high 13 rebounds.
Khadeem Lattin and Jamuni McNeace combined for nine blocked shots between them. The Sooners scored 19 fast-break points and added 14 more off of 12 TCU turnovers.
The Horned Frogs are the third ranked team Oklahoma has beaten on the road this season. The win was the fifth by the Sooners in seven Big 12 openers under head coach Lon Kruger.
Of the five conference openers this weekend, the home team prevailed in just one game (Texas Tech over Baylor).
Next up for the Oklahoma men is a Bedlam encounter at home against in-state rival Oklahoma State on Wednesday.