Oklahoma basketball: Sooners halt 6-game skid, defeat K-State 86-77
By Chip Rouse
Trae Young scored 28 points and dished out seven assists as the six-game losing streak for Oklahoma basketball came mercifully came to an end on Saturday with an 86-77 home win over Kansas State.
Young took only 11 shots in the game for Oklahoma and made seven of them. Ten of his 11 shots were from behind the three-point line, and he drained six of those. The six treys were his most since he made six of 11 against Baylor back on Jan. 30.
Oklahoma took the lead for good at the 13:36 mark in the first half and looked like the Sooner team that was playing so well at the beginning of the season. With Young managing the offense, the Sooners had good ball movement, and it wasn’t all about the Sooners’ sensational point guard as more of his teammates got involved in the offense.
A three-pointer by another OU freshman, Brady Manek, put Oklahoma ahead 18-17, and that was followed by an 11-1 Sooner run to widen the advantage to a dozen points and their first double-digit lead at any point in the six-game skid.
In addition to Young’s 28 points (18 of which were in the first half), Christian James contributed 15 points and Jamuni McNeace and Manek added 10 each. McNeace also collected nine rebounds to lead OU in that category.
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Barry Brown, Sr. was the high-point man for Kansas State with 28 points. It was the K-State junior’s third highest point total of the season. He scored 38 points against Oklahoma State and 34 against Baylor earlier in the season. Dean Wade scored 15 points for the Wildcats and Xavier Sneed tallied 12.
Oklahoma shot 52.7 percent for the game. The Sooners are 9-0 this season when their shooting percentage is 50 percent or better.
By beating Kansas State, Oklahoma avenged an earlier loss to the Wildcats, 87-69, in Manhattan.
The win improved OU’s Big 12 record to 7-9 and 17-11 overall. It was the Sooners first conference win since they were 6-3 after defeating Baylor in late January. Kansas State falls to 9-7 in the Big 12 and 20-9 for the season.
The Sooners travel to Waco, Texas, for a game with Baylor on Tuesday and close out the regular season in a rare Friday night game, hosting Iowa State.