Following a familiar theme, Oklahoma started slowly before taking control late in the opening half and turning up the heat in the second half in finishing off a 94-78 win over Alcorn State on Saturday night.
Playing before a student-only crowd at cozy McCasland Field House, which served as the home of Sooner basketball for nearly 50 years from 1928 to 1975, five different OU players scored in double figures, with a trio of those players coming off the bench.
Alcorn State, which plays out of the Southwestern Athletic Conference, has yet to win a game in 10 tries this season, but you would have never known it the way the Braves came out firing right from the opening tip. The Sooners fell behind by as many as nine points right out of the gate as Alcorn State shot nearly 60% in the first half.
Oklahoma managed to weather the first-half storm, though, and went on a 31-16 run of its own to finish out the opening 20 minutes and grab a 49-41 halftime margin. This was strikingly similar to what happened in OU's win earlier in the week over Georgia Tech.
⚠️ 𝑊𝑖𝑛𝑑 𝐴𝑑𝑣𝑖𝑠𝑜𝑟𝑦 ⚠️@jalonmoore3 | #BoomerSooner ☝️ pic.twitter.com/mhsWxXCD6V
— Oklahoma Basketball (@OU_MBBall) December 8, 2024
The win was the ninth consecutive win to start the season for the 21st-ranked Sooners, who are one win away from tying their 10-0 beginning last season. It marks the first time in program history that OU men's basketball has gone back-to-back seasons with as many as nine straight wins to start the season.
Jalon Moore scored 19 of his game-high 20 points in the second half as the Sooners came out of the locker room and went on a 19-7 run in the first five minutes of the second half to open up a 68-48 advantage that Alcorn State was unable to effectively recover from.
True freshmen guards Jeremiah Fears and Dayton Forsythe contributed 14 points each to the Sooners' attack, and transfer additions Mohamed Wague and Brycen Goodine each poured in a dozen more off the bench.
Oklahoma may have gotten off to a sluggish start in the game but heated up quickly, shooting a season-high 55% (35-of-64) for the game. That's the good news. The bad news is that the Sooners allowed a season-high 53% field-goal percentage by Alcorn State.
While the Sooners shot a very high percentage inside the arc, they shot just 32% when they fired up the 3-ball, their second-worst 3-point percentage of the season.
Saturday's game was the second annual student appreciation game, with only students admitted. The students were admitted with a student ID and upon entering the arena received Monster Energy Drinks, balloons and T-shirts.
The OU men are off until next Saturday when the Sooners will play in-state rival Oklahoma State in a Bedlam series hoops matchup in Oklahoma City.
Three takeaways that help tell the story of the Oklahoma win over Alcorn State:
Jalon Moore again leads the way for the Sooners
Jalon Moore led the Sooners with 20 points, including 19 of Oklahoma's 45 second-half points. In his second season after transferring to OU from Georgia Tech, Moore, who averages 18.6 points a game, made eight of his nine field-goal attempts in the game. It was the fourth time in nine starts he has been the Sooners' high scorer this season, and he has eclipsed the 20-point barrier six times.
Sooner bench scores nearly half of Oklahoma's 94 points
The Oklahoma bench contributed 43 points in the win over Alcorn State. Three OU reserves -- Dayton Forsythe (14), Mohamed Wague (12) and Brycen Goodine (12) -- scored in double figures and collectively shot 58% from the field. Twelve of Forsythe's 14 points came on four 3-pointers.
Creating offense from defense
Twenty-seven of Oklahoma's points came directly off of 18 Alcorn State turnovers. Twelve of the turnovers were the result of steals by the Sooner defense.