Austin Reaves put the Oklahoma basketball team on his back and willed the Sooners to an improbable 78-76 win over TCU on the final weekend of the college basketball regular season.
The Sooners (19-12, 9-9) trailed by double digits practically the entire game, but outscored TCU 17-5 over the final 3:26 of the game to turn what for the longest time to be a devastating loss into a victory that in all likelihood punched their ticket to the NCAA Tournament.
Reaves played the game of his life, finishing with a career-best 41 points and more than half of the OU team total. The Wichita State transfer scored nine of the Sooners’ final 12 points, including the game-winning field goal with just 0.4 seconds left on the clock to secure the Oklahoma victory.
Reaves’ total was the highest scoring output by a Big 12 player this season.
Kristian Doolittle added 15 points to the OU cause. Reaves and Doolittle combined for 56 points; the rest of the OU team scored 22.
The game couldn’t have started off worse for the Sooners. Led by Desmond Bane, the Big 12’s second-leading scorer, TCU blitzed Oklahoma early, hitting five of its first six shots, three of them from three-point range, opening up a double-digit advantage in the first 10 minutes and leading by 18, 44-26 at the half.
Bane finished the first half with 19 points, including three-of-four three-pointers.
Oklahoma started off the game looking very flat and sloppy on both ends of the floor. The Sooners, who lead the Big 12, averaging just 11 turnovers per game, committed four in the first four minutes of the game, and they had nine by halftime. It was as if all the life had been kicked out of the team from the buzzer-beating loss OU had suffered at home to Texas earlier in the week.
Reaves had 16 of the Sooners’ 26 points in the opening half, and he wasn’t getting any help from anyone else on the floor wearing an Oklahoma jersey. The 18-point halftime deficit was the largest by OU all season, and the way the Sooners were playing, it appeared as if things could easily get much worse in the second stanza.
Oklahoma still trailed by 17 points, 59-42 at the 10:22 marker in the second half. Even though the Sooners trailed by a large margin, you could see they were playing with greater intensity and purpose and were not about to give up and concede victory to the Horned Frogs.
In the end, the Sooners’ will and perseverance won out — aided greatly by Reaves’ unbelievable performance.
TCU finishes the regular season with a 16-15 overall record and 7-11 and tied for seventh place in the Big 12. The win gives Oklahoma the three seed and a first-round bye in next week’s Big 12 Tournament. The Sooners will face No. 6 West Virginia in the quarterfinal round on Thursday in Kansas City.