Sooners go to 7-0 with win over Louisville for Battle 4 Atlantis championship

Jalon Moore scored a game-high 24 points along with seven rebounds and Oklahoma led most of the way as the Sooners defeated Louisville 69-64 to win the Battle 4 Atlantis championship on Friday.

Oklahoma defeated Providence, Arizona and now Louisville over the past three days on its way to the tournament championship held at Imperial Arena in the Bahamas.

The Sooners fell behind 5-0 at the outset but took the lead for good at the 10:13-minute mark of the first half and never trailed after that. Oklahoma led 39-32 at halftime, but Louisville scored the first six points of the second half to close within one at 39-38.

The game was close throughout the second half. OU never led by more than five points in the second 20 minutes. Louisville's Reyne Smith hit a three-pointer to tie the game at 58 with four and a half minutes to go, but Oklahoma outscored the Cardinals 11-6 the rest of the way to secure the win, the Sooners seventh straight to begin the 2024-25 season.

True freshman Jeremiah Fears, who had a 20 points in the win over Providence and a season and career-high 26 in defeating Arizona on Thursday, added 10 against Louisville. St. Johns transfer Glenn Taylor Jr. scored \eight of his dozen points in the final six minutes when OU really needed them to hold on to the lead.

The Sooners, with seven transfers and three first-year freshman, are playing at a high level despite the roster turnover from a year ago, and early on in the 2024-25 season don't look like the team picked to finish 15th out of 16 SEC teams in the conference preseason media poll.

Oklahoma will next be in action on Tuesday, Dec. 3, when the Sooners host Georgia Tech at Lloyd Noble Center.

Three takeaways from OU's Battle 4 Atlantis championship win

• Oklahoma shot 47.5 percent for the game (21 of 44), the fifth time in seven games the Sooners have shot 47 percent or better from the field., while holding Louisville. In the only other game Louisville shot lower than 45 percent in a game this season, the 5-2 Cardinals lost to Tennessee 77-55.

• The Sooners scored 15 points off of 14 Louisville turnovers.

• Oklahoma was outrebounded 44-23, including 21 offensive rebounds that led to 25 second-chance points.