Oklahoma basketball: Sooners storm back from huge deficit but fall 63-60 to Iowa State
By Chip Rouse
Both Oklahoma basketball teams have had great difficulty getting out of the gate from the opening tip this week.
The OU women fell behind 21-5 after one quarter against No. 23 Baylor on Tuesday. Twenty-four hours later the Sooner men found themselves down 25-7 eight and a half minutes into the opening half against 25th-ranked Iowa State, the second top-25 teams Oklahoma has faced in four days.
What’s more surprising, both games were played before the home crowd at Lloyd Noble Center.
The Oklahoma men made a remarkable comeback, outscoring Iowa State 24-4 over the final 11:36 in the first half to send the game to halftime tied at 29-all.
The game remained close the entire second half, but after a slam dunk by Iowa State’ Osun Osunniyi seven seconds into second stanza that put the Cyclones up 31-29, OU never led the entire second half after that. The Sooners took their first lead in the game came with 3:02 to go in the first half, pulling ahead 27-25 on a jumper by Jalen Hill.
The game was tied four times in the second half, a but Iowa State maintained a three- to five-point margin for most of it and held on at the end to win 63-60, handing the Sooners their second consecutive Big 12 loss to open the conference season. Meanwhile, Iowa State has now won both of its Big 12 starts to open the league schedule.
Iowa State held Oklahoma’s Grant Sherfield, the team’s leading scorer on the season to just four points. Sherfield, who averaged 17.3 points coming into the game, was saddled with foul trouble and took seven shots in the game. It was the first time in 14 games this season Sherfield has not scored in double digits. He had scored 20 or more points in five of his last six games.
Hill led the Sooners with 16 points, Tanner Groves added 15 and Bijan Cortes scored 10 off the bench.
The Sooners’ overall record drops to 9-5, and they now take their 0-2 conference record on the road the next two games at Texas Tech on Saturday and at No. 3 Kansas on Tuesday.