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Oklahoma basketball: Lady Sooners earn NCAA Tournament No. 4 seed

By Chip Rouse

Oklahoma's Taylor Robertson (30) celebrates a 3-point basket on Dec. 7 against Eastern Michigan at Lloyd Noble Center in Norman. The Sooners will host IUPUI on Saturday in the first round of the NCAA Tournament.cover main
Oklahoma's Taylor Robertson (30) celebrates a 3-point basket on Dec. 7 against Eastern Michigan at Lloyd Noble Center in Norman. The Sooners will host IUPUI on Saturday in the first round of the NCAA Tournament.cover main /
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The Oklahoma basketball men missed out, but the Sooner women did not and are headed to the NCAA Tournament as a No. 4 seed.

By earning a No. 4 seed in the NCAA Women’s Tournament, the Lady Sooners were designated as a host site in the first and second round, which OU head coach Jennie Baranczyk described as “something that to me is really special,” in an interview with The Oklahoma City Oklahoman. “For us to be able to do that is really huge.”

Oklahoma will play the Jaguars of IUPUI (which stands for Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis), the No, 13 seed in the Bridgeport (Connecticut) Region. That game will be played on Saturday at Lloyd Noble Center.

Lloyd Noble Center is going to have a lot of basketball action over the next couple of weeks as both the OU men and women are host sites for the NIT and NCAA Tournaments, respectively, for potentially two games each.

IUPUI won the Horizon League Tournament and is making its first NCAA Tournament appearance. The Jaguars also won the automatic bid in 2020, but the NCAA Tournament was cancelled that season because of the COVID-19 outbreak.

The Sooners are making their first NCAA Tournament appearance since 2018 and their 21st overall. They are 33-21 all-time in NCAA Tournament action. Oklahoma lost to Baylor in the semifinal round of the Big 12 Tournament after finishing fourth in the conference standings with a 12-6 league record and 24-8 overall.

The Jaguars are 24-6 overall and 18-4 in Horizon League play. IUPUI led the Horizon League in scoring, averaging 70.4 points per game, as well as field-goal and three-point shooting percentage. It isn’t all about offense for the Jaguars, however. They also allow the fewest points in the Horizon League (55.7) and hold their opponents to the lowest shooting percentage (38.0).

IUPUI fifth-year senior Macie Williams is the Horizon League Player of the Year for the fourth-straight season. She averages 13 points and 7.7 rebounds and has recorded 13 double-doubles this season.

The Sooners, the Big 12’s highest scoring team at 83.3 points per game, are led in the scoring column by a trio of seniors — Madi Williams, Taylor Robertson and Ana Llanusa — all of whom average 17-plus points per game. Robertson is the career leader at OU in made three-pointers.

If Oklahoma is able to get by the challenge from IUPUI, the Lady Sooners will face the winner of the first-round matchup between No. 5 Notre Dame and No. 12 Massachusetts on March 21. That game will also be played in Norman.

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