Tag: Sooners

NORMAN — Oklahoma was locked into yet another slugfest on Saturday against South Carolina.

Despite a poor offensive first half, where the Sooners scored just 34 points and committed 11 turnovers, Porter Moser’s squad clung to a 59-54 lead with 7:23 left in the game. But considering the stakes, and the Sooners at risk of falling to 0-5 in conference play, they needed a spark.

They got it.

Jalon Moore was fouled on back-to-back trips, making 3-of-4 free throw attempts. Jeremiah Fears then found Mohamed Wague for an alley-oop dunk, and Moore followed that up with a layup.

With 4:05 to go, Fears found Kobe Elvis for the dagger 3-pointer that punctuated a 15-0 run, putting the Sooners up 18 points.

It was a scoring flurry the Sooners desperately needed, as they rode that momentum to a 82-62 win at the Lloyd Noble Center.

It wasn’t the prettiest win, but it was a game the Sooners had to win to avoid falling to the bottom of the SEC standings. They improved to 14-4 on the season and 1-4 in SEC play.

“The understatement of the year is how bad we needed that,” Moser said. “To get that narrative of getting the first one out of the way and getting our confidence back up to play winning basketball. You’re going to have tons of opportunities in this league.

“We needed to log that first (win) so we could move forward.”

— Moore continues to be super aggressive offensively, and the Sooners needed that against the Gamecocks. He finished with a game-high 22 points on an efficient 6-of-10 shooting performance, adding eight rebounds. He’s also been good at getting to the free throw line, making 10-of-11 attempts.

This comes just a few days after Moore scored a career-high 29 points against Texas, with 26 of those points coming in the second half.

— Turnovers threatened to again doom the Sooners. They committed 11 in the first half. But they cleaned that up in the second half, committing just one.

The thing that helped? South Carolina were just as bad at taking care of the ball, committing 12 of its 17 turnovers in the first half. The Sooners also won the points-off-turnover battle 19-3.

“I think that’s the narrative of this team,” Moser said. “It was better winning basketball. It’s been a theme for us these last two days. We had an old school company mission statement: We need to play better winning basketball to win games. I thought we had 11 (turnovers) in the first half, and we talked about: How many were unforced? Just dribbling too deep.

“We really took care of it in the second half. Just way more urgency.”

— After being out of the rotation the first three SEC games, Dayton Forsythe got some minutes in both halves. The true freshman came into the game at the 13:20 mark of the first half and drilled a jumper 14 seconds later.

He made one of the biggest plays of the game midway through the second half, hitting a deep trailing 3-pointer with 8:14 on the clock that pushed Oklahoma’s lead to eight.

This comes after Forsythe gave the Sooners a spark in the second half of Wednesday’s loss against Texas.

Forsythe finished the game with five points, two rebounds and an assist, and again provided effort plays on both ends. He’s likely earned a spot in the rotation moving forward.

“After last game, we talked about it, and we all felt like, why do anything different than we did the last 15 minutes of the Texas game?” Forsythe said. “I feel like today we did that. We played like the last 15 minutes and we gave everything we had, and the result was the result.”

— This marked the second game with the Sooners’ new starting lineup, with Brycen Goodine in place of Kobe Elvis.

The results were mixed against Texas, but it paid off against the Gamecocks. Goodine made two 3-pointers, while Elvis scored 12 points with four 3-pointers off the bench.

— Jeremiah Fears was great as the Sooners’ primary playmaker and nearly finished with a triple double, finishing with 16 points, nine rebounds and a career-high eight assists.

Fears’ jumper has remained inconsistent, finishing 5-of-12 from the field and 0-of-4 from the 3-point line, and that’s held him back from being OU’s primary scoring engine. But the playmaking and all-around play has been there.

— The Sooners made 18-of-11 free throw attempts, while the Gamecocks made just 11-of-21.

The Gamecocks’ struggles were a big reason why the Sooners won the game.

Up next: The Sooners have a bye week before traveling to Arkansas on Saturday.

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