Oklahoma basketball: This one not close; Sooners lose by 27 to TCU

Oklahoma basketball had been the poster child for close games in Big 12 head-to-head competition this season, but on Tuesday night in Ft. Worth, Texas, the game and the outcome were anything but close.

Four of Oklahoma’s five conference losses coming into the game with 11th-ranked TCU were by four points or less. The Horned Frogs, who were coming off of a 23-point road shellacking of then-No. 2 Kansas on Saturday, made sure from the opening tip against the Sooners that nothing was going to be close about Tuesday night’s game.

The Sooners helped out in assuring that was the case by turning the ball over twice in the opening minute and four times in the first three minutes and going 0 for 4 in their first four shot attempts. Meanwhile, the Horned Frogs raced out to an 11-0 advantage, and that proved to be just the beginning of the storm.

This game was completely dominated by TCU from start to finish and ended in a humiliating 79-52 beatdown. And it wasn’t like the Horned Frogs were hitting every shot they took. The Sooners, in fact, had three more shot attempts than TCU (64 to 61) and made just six fewer shots (20 to 26).

"“Every game we have bounced back and showed resilience and toughness,” head coach Porter Moser said in the postgame press conference. “Tonight we didn’t. Tonight was a total beatdown.”"

After falling behind 11-0, Oklahoma got no closer than eight points the remainder of the opening half — and that was on a three-pointer by C.J. Noland after TCU had scored the first 11 points of the game — and were in arrears by 17 points, 44-27, after the opening 20 minutes.

The second half began as a repeat of the first, with the Horned Frogs scoring the first 11 points, extending the lead to 55-27 and the worst deficit the Sooner men had faced all season. The Sooners did not score their first field goal of the second half until seven minutes had elapsed.

The best thing that happened for Oklahoma in this game was when the clock hit triple zeroes and stopped the hemorrhaging, at least on the basketball court. The emotional and mental fallout from this loss is going to last a while. And, oh my, No. 2-ranked Alabama comes to the Lloyd Noble Center on Saturday.

TCU’s Mike Miles Jr. led all scorers in the game with 23 points, one of three Horned Frogs in double figures. C.J. Noland led OU with 11 points coming off the bench.

The Sooners have now lost three games in a row and are 11-9 overall but just 2-6 in the Big 12.

Five key takeaways that tell the sobering and sad story of the game

• Oklahoma got just 20 combined points from its five starters. Thirty-two of the Sooners 52 points came from the bench, led by C.J. Noland’s team-high 11 points.
• The Sooners shot just 31 percent for the game on 20 of 64 field goal attempts. That was OU’s lowest shooting percentage of the season through 20 games.
• TCU had 29 free throw attempts and made 21 of them. The Sooners were 7 of 10 from the charity stripe.
• TCU scored 16 points off of 15 Oklahoma turnovers and 25 points on fast breaks.
• Both teams pulled down 14 offensive rebounds, one of the few positives in the game for the Sooners. TCU scored 17 second-chance points off those rebounds, Oklahoma just 10.

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