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OUmillenium
3/28/2008, 11:44 AM
Might have been posted but here it is again...

http://collegebasketball.rivals.com/content.asp?SID=1146&CID=696327


Bob McClellan
Rivals.com College Basketball Editor

Top 10 Profile
1988 OKLAHOMA
Final record: 35-4
Non-conference record: 20-1
Double-digit victories: 26
Average victory margin: 25.0
NBA first-round picks: Three (Stacey King, Mookie Blaylock, Harvey Grant)
THE TOP 10 COUNTDOWN It took a miracle to bring down the 1987-88 Oklahoma team.

Actually, it took "the Miracles," the nickname given to the players on the 1987-88 Kansas Jayhawks not named Danny Manning.

Because of Manning and his teammates, the Sooners are one of only two teams in the Rivals.com Top 10 Teams Since The NCAA Field Expanded To 64 that didn't win the national championship.

"It's bittersweet," said Stacey King, the Sooners' All-American center and leading scorer. "You look at that team and it had so much talent it makes it frustrating. We had beaten Kansas twice pretty easily, and we coasted through the NCAA Tournament. We dominated the whole year. We're definitely one team that should have won."



All-American center Stacey King was a member of the 1988 Sooners.
King hardly is boasting. OU went 35-4 that season. It topped the 100-point mark 20 times. Two of those came in the Chaminade Classic in Honolulu, a tournament won by the Sooners.

"We played Dayton in Hawaii and I can remember seeing a headline in one of the papers, something like, 'Dayton scores 100, loses by 59,' " OU forward Dave Sieger said. "You don't see those kinds of headlines."

The actual score was OU 151, Dayton 99. Those were the kinds of headlines the Sooners made all season. They won 12 games by 30 or more points. They pressed on defense and ran on offense under coach Billy Tubbs. They featured four future NBA Draft picks, three of whom (King, Harvey Grant and Mookie Blaylock) were first-rounders.

"It was fun," King said. "We played 'Billyball.' He just turned us loose, and we played an up-tempo game.

"Nolan Richardson had started it in Tulsa, and Billy expanded on it. Nolan gets credit for '40 minutes of Hell.' Billy did it differently. We used pressure defense, but we put pressure on offensively as well because everybody on our team could score 20 or more points. We could isolate on the perimeter or dominate inside. If you took one away, the other would kill you. It was tough to match up with us."


1987-88 Oklahoma roster
33 Stacey King (C, 6-10, 229, Jr., Lawton, Okla.)
25 Harvey Grant (F, 6-8, 200, Sr., Sparta, Ga.)
10 Mookie Blaylock (G, 6-0, 177, Jr., Garland, Texas)
14 Ricky Grace (G, 6-1, 172, Sr., Dallas)
44 Dave Sieger (F, 6-5, 207, Sr., San Bernardino, Calif.)
22 Tyrone Jones (F, 6-5, 215, Jr., Washington, D.C.)
32 Andre Wiley (F, 6-5, 197, Jr., Flint, Mich.)
24 Terrence Mullins (G, 6-2, 198, Fr., San Francisco)
50 Tony Martin (F, 6-7, 230, So., Los Angeles)
20 Art Pollard (G, 6-2, 184, Jr., East Chicago, Ill.)
21 Mike Bell (F, 6-5, 201, Jr., Montgomery, Ala.)
11 Jason Skurcenski (G, 6-2, 172, So., Bartlesvillle, Okla.)

Head Coach: Billy Tubbs
Assistant Coaches:
Mike Mims, Jim Kerwin, Mike Anderson The Big Eight was ungodly that season. Five of its members made the NCAA Tournament, and three made it all the way to the Elite Eight. KU had Manning. Kansas State, the other team to make the Eight, had future NBA players Mitch Richmond and Steve Henson. Iowa State had Jeff Grayer. Missouri had Derrick Chievous.
"It was a very good league that year," said King, now a broadcaster for Chicago Bulls games. "Every night was a tough game. Even teams in the bottom of league were tough that year."

The Sooners won all of their home games and lost only once to a team that was not from the Big Eight (a neutral-site loss to a mediocre LSU team). They lost 69-62 at Kansas State and 93-90 in overtime at Missouri. But they also beat the Wildcats and the Tigers twice apiece, in Norman and in the Big 12 Tournament.



Dave Sieger was the Sooners' fifth-leading scorer in 1987-88.
"They were really, really good," said Henson, the Kansas State point guard who's now an assistant coach at UNLV. "They scored a lot of points, pressed and turned people over. It makes sense to me that they would be included in the list (of top 10 teams despite not winning the title). They were so talented. I can assure you they were no fun to play."

What the Big Eight teams already knew, the rest of the nation found out in the NCAA Tournament. The Sooners blew through the Southeast Region. They routed Tennessee-Chattanooga 94-66 in the first round and dispatched Auburn 107-87 in the second round.

Louisville hung around in the Sweet 16, but OU prevailed 108-98. Villanova managed to hold King & Co. to 78 points in the regional final, but could muster only 59.

That put the Sooners in the Final Four, which just so happened to be held at Kemper Arena in Kansas City, Mo. Meanwhile, the Midwest Region final had come down to sixth-seeded KU and fourth-seeded K-State. The Jayhawks won rather convincingly, 71-58, to punch their ticket home.

So half of the Final Four was filled by a quarter of the Big Eight. The "interlopers" were Arizona and Duke. The Wildcats, a No. 1 seed that had cruised through the tournament, was dispatched of by the Sooners, 86-78. The Blue Devils, a No. 2 seed, fell to the Jayhawks, 66-59.

"I think that we fully expected to be playing Duke instead of Kansas," Sieger said. "They (the Jayhawks) were playing very well, though."


Season Results
Overall: 35-4; Big Eight: 12-2
N28 Texas A&M W 104-80
D1 at Penn State W 93-59
D5 Loyola-Chicago W 123-73
D7 Sam Houston State W 111-69
D10 at Florida State W 89-87
D12 Centenary W 152-84
D19 Georgia State W 124-81
D23 vs. Virgina # W 109-61
D24 vs. Dayton # W 151-99
D25 vs. Georgia # W 93-90
D29 vs. Oral Roberts $ W 144-93
D30 vs. Illinois State $ W 107-56
J4 Austin Peay W 109-69
J9 Oklahoma State W 108-80
J11 vs. Louisiana State L 77-84
J16 at Kansas State L 62-69
J20 at Colorado W 96-76
J23 Pittsburgh W 86-83
J27 Iowa State W 109-86
J30 at Iowa State W 96-91
F3 at Kansas W 73-65
F6 Missouri W 120-101
F10 at Nebraska W 92-77
F13 Kansas State W 112-95
F17 at Oklahoma State W 79-75
F20 New Mexico W 120-100
F24 Kansas W 95-87
F27 Colorado W 134-84
M3 at Missouri (OT) L 90-93
M5 Nebraska W 113-93
M11 vs. Colorado % W 99-66
M12 vs. Missouri % W 102-99
M13 vs. Kansas St. % W 88-83
M17 vs. UT-Chattanooga ^ W 94-66
M19 vs. Auburn ^ W 107-87
M24 vs. Louisville & W 108-98
M26 vs. Villanova * W 78-59
A2 vs. Arizona ! W 86-78
A4 vs. Kansas @ L 79-83
#—Chaminade Classic, Honolulu, Hawaii
$—All-College Tournament, Oklahoma City
%—Big Eight Tournament, Kansas City, Mo.
^—NCAA Southeast Regional, Atlanta
&—NCAA Southeast Regional Semifinal, Birmingham, Ala.
*—NCAA Southeast Regional Final, Birmingham, Ala.
!—NCAA Final Four, Kansas City, Mo.
@—NCAA Championship Game, Kansas City, Mo.

Kansas' victory over Duke set up the third game of the season between the teams. The Sooners had won both of the earlier meetings, by eight points each time. The pace was more to Kansas' liking in the first meeting in Lawrence, with Oklahoma winning 73-65. In Norman, the Sooners forced the tempo more and cruised home 95-87.
KU coach Larry Brown decided not to back down from the pace in the national title game.

"It wasn't our intent to run with them," said Clint Normore, a reserve for the Jayhawks. "Our intent was to take what the defense gave us. We just played."

The pace in the first half was sizzling. Sieger hit all six of his 3-point attempts in the first 20 minutes, but still the game was tied 50-50 at the break.

"I think I'd maybe hit one 3-pointer, and either on the second or third one the guy hit me on the elbow," Sieger said. "It's sort of a subtle thing that people will do to affect the shot, and you don't get called. Well, he hit me and it still went in. I knew at that point it was gonna be a good half."

But the Jayhawks hung around with the Sooners.

"We thought they'd slow the pace down," King said. "We were good at dictating pace, forcing teams to play out of character. They didn't try to run the first two times we played.

"We were like, 'This is great, we'll score 130-140. They won't keep be able to keep up this pace.' "

Oklahoma got up 65-60, the biggest lead of the second half, with about 12 minutes to play. But Kansas chipped away and eventually grabbed the lead.

The Jayhawks began to let the air out of the ball, and King said the Sooners played into their hands. Tubbs called off his frenetic full-court man-to-man pressure defense, and KU was able to catch its breath and milk the clock.

"He (Tubbs) thought we were tired, but we weren't," King said. "We had played that way the whole year. We didn't think we were tired.

"We might have had some foul trouble at the guard spot. He didn't want to get us in a situation where we might lose Mookie. They got us spread out, and they cut back door."

Kansas prevailed 83-79 to win the national title. Manning was named the Most Outstanding Player after posting 31 points on 13-of-24 shooting with 18 rebounds, five steals and two assists.

The Miracles shot a miraculous 71 percent from the floor in support of their star. Milt Newton was 6-for-6 and was the second-leading scorer with 15 points. Kevin Pritchard shot 6-for-7 from the field and finished with 13 points. Normore made all three of his shots, all in the first half, and scored seven points. He was on the receiving end of both of Manning's assists.

"Danny is the consummate leader and team player," Normore said. "He included everybody in everything, and that's what made us so good. We were a team from top to bottom. It was a shared experience, a common goal, a common understanding. And there was no pressure on us."

Ultimately a team that lived on applying pressure cracked ever so slightly under it.

"Danny was great, but those other guys - Kevin Pritchard, Chris Piper - they were very important," King said. "They had a walk-on who was a football player, Clint Normore. He hit some big buckets. He wasn't even on our scouting report.

"It was Danny and the Miracles, but the Miracles really stepped up that game."