It had been exactly one month since the Oklahoma basketball men last won a conference game.
The Sooners snapped a seven-game Big 12 losing streak with a dominant second half and a 79-65 victory over 12th-ranked Kansas State. This win, though, was much more convincing than OU’s last win over a Big 12 opponent. The Sooners squeaked out a 77-76 win over West Virginia on Jan. 14.
Oklahoma claimed its third conference win against 10 losses and moved back to .500 overall with its 13th victory of the season.
Sooner season scoring leader Grant Sherfield led the way for OU with a game high 22 points, eight rebounds and six assists. Tanner Groves added 16 along with eight rebounds. And perhaps even more notable, the Sooner big man committed just one personal foul in 30 minutes of action.
"“I think Grant had the best floor game since he’s worn a Sooner uniform,” said head coach Porter Moser in his postgame comments. “The ball went where it needed to go. He was just so locked in. Best overall communication game that he’s had.”"
Sherfield drained a three-pointer with 10 seconds to go in the first half that tied the game at 36. K-State broke the halftime deadlock with a bucket to open the second half, but it was all Oklahoma after that.
The Sooners went on a 12-2 run at the start of the second stanza to open up a 48-38 advantage and were never headed from there.
Picked to finish last in the Big 12 Preseason Poll, Kansas State (19-7, 7-6) has been the surprise team in the Big 12, racing out to a 6-1 start to begin Big 12 play. But the Cats have gone 1-5 since, and their last two losses have been to teams at the bottom of the Big 12 standings (OU and Texas Tech).
“(Oklahoma) kicked our butts, and they deserve all the credit in the world for that,” said K-State head coach Jerome Tang after the game.
OU will hope to ride the momentum of reaching the win column once again when they head south to Austin, Texas, for a Red River Showdown rematch on Saturday with the No. 6 Texas Longhorns, locked in a three-way tie with Kansas and Baylor at the top of the Big 12 standings.
Three key takeaways from a Sooner win a long time coming
- The four-man combination of Grant Sherfield, Tanner Groves, Milos Uzan and Jalen Hill scored 63, or 78, percent of Oklahoma’s 79 points versus K-State.
- Oklahoma shot 51 percent from the field (25 of 49) and 48 percent from three-point range (11 of 23).
- The Sooners converted 14 Kansas State turnovers into 18 points.