Oklahoma basketball: Austin Reaves earns Big 12 Player of Week honors
By Chip Rouse
Oklahoma basketball junior Austin Reaves carried the Sooners on his back with a career-high, 41-point performance in a dramatic, come-from-behind win over TCU on Saturday.
On Monday, Reaves was named Big 12 Player of the Week.
Combined with 13 points in a one-point loss to Texas earlier in the week, Reaves averaged 27 points, 7.0 rebounds, 3.5 assists and 2.0 blocks in Oklahoma’s two games last week. In addition, the Wichita State transfer shot 51.6 percent in the two games and made 19 of 20 free throws.
Reaves led an improbable Sooner comeback from a 19-point deficit at TCU, scoring nine of OU’s final 12 points, including a closely contested 15-foot fadeaway field goal with just 0.5 seconds left on the game clock to give Oklahoma its first lead in the entire game and seal the miraculous victory.
Reaves’ buzzer-beating shot against TCU was eerily similar to what happened to Oklahoma four days earlier, when Texas’ Matt Coleman banked in a desperation three-point shot from 30-plus feet to steal a one-point victory from the Sooners.
The 41 points scored by Reaves on Saturday is the most by a Big 12 player this season and the most by an Oklahoma player since Trae Young’s 44-point performance against Baylor in January 2018.
According to Oklahoma men’s basketball records, since the start of the 2014-15 season, there have been eight Big 12 players score 40 or more points in a game, six of those have been Sooners.
Big 12 Newcomer of the Week honors were awarded to Oscar Tshiebwe of West Virginia.
Reaves is the second Oklahoma player to be named Big 12 Player of the Week this season. Senior Kristian Doolittle received the honor on three different occasions.