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Oklahoma basketball: Sooner women follow men with first-round exit

By Chip Rouse

SAN ANTONIO - APRIL 04: The Oklahoma Sooners bench is dejected in the second half against the Stanford Cardinal during the Women's Final Four Semifinals at the Alamodome on April 4, 2010 in San Antonio, Texas. Stanford defeated Oklahoma 73-66. (Photo by Jeff Gross/Getty Images)
SAN ANTONIO - APRIL 04: The Oklahoma Sooners bench is dejected in the second half against the Stanford Cardinal during the Women's Final Four Semifinals at the Alamodome on April 4, 2010 in San Antonio, Texas. Stanford defeated Oklahoma 73-66. (Photo by Jeff Gross/Getty Images) /
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Now the Oklahoma basketball season is officially over, on both sides of the gender gap.

There was a lot of talk about why the Sooner men didn’t deserve to be in the NCAA Men’s Tournament, but they made it in anyway, despite what some were saying. The same criticism was directed at the Lady Sooners, who were, in fact, the very last team (No. 64) to get into the tournament.

Both OU teams – the men and the women – justified the criticism directed at their tournament selection, playing like the lower seeds they were.

Exactly 24 hours after the Sooner men were bounced from the tournament, the very first team to bite the dust, the OU women ran into a buzz saw in No. 5 seed DePaul. DePaul jumped on Oklahoma early and never let up, racing to a 90-79 victory and advancing to play another day in the NCAA Women’s Tournament.

The Blue Demons began the game hitting four consecutive three-pointers and opened up at 15-7 first-quarter advantage from which the 12th-seeded Sooners were never able to fully recover.

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All five DePaul starters scored in double figures and accounted for 78 of the Blue Demons’ 90 points.

DePaul rattled home 10 of their 12 three-pointers for the game in the opening half and shot 50 percent for the game from long range. The Blue Demons led by 10 at the half, 42-32, and widened their advantage to 52-36 in the third quarter before the Sooners mounted a comeback on a 22-13 run to cut the DePaul lead down to seven points late in the third quarter.

Oklahoma closed to within five early in the final period, but that was a close as the Sooners would get.

Seniors Vionise Pierre-Louis and Gabbi Ortiz led Oklahoma in scoring with 21 and 18 points, respectively. Freshman Shaina Pellington added 14 more, but it was not enough to overcome DePaul’s balanced scoring and 51.7-percent shooting.

The Sooner women end their season with a record of 16-15. The 16 wins is the fewest by an OU team under head coach Sherri Coale since 1998-99, her third season at Oklahoma. That 1998-99 team won 15 and lost 14. This season was the Sooners’ 19th consecutive trip to the NCAA Women’s Tournament, all under Coale.

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