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BajaOklahoma
1/29/2006, 10:13 AM
UT falters at OU again, 82-72
Red-hot Sooners send Longhorns home with first Big 12 loss



12:02 AM CST on Sunday, January 29, 2006
By BRIAN DAVIS / The Dallas Morning News



NORMAN, Okla. – Fourth-ranked Texas swaggered into its personal haunted house Saturday night and once again stumbled out.

Michael Neal sank back-to-back 3-pointers, Terrell Everett banked in another, as did David Godbold, and No. 24 Oklahoma came away with an 82-72 victory.

OU started league play 0-2. But now, the Sooners (13-4, 4-2) are riding a four-game winning streak and suddenly have new life in the Big 12 title race. The Longhorns (17-3) fell to 5-1 in league play and dropped to 7-21 in games played at Lloyd Noble Center.

"I just believe in our program," said OU coach Kelvin Sampson, who praised the 12,908 fans for the electric atmosphere. "I told our guys today that these are the games we've always won."

OU's most maligned unit – its backcourt – played perhaps its best game of the season. Everett had a game-high 25 points on 10-of-15 shooting. Neal poured in 14 by hitting four of his eight 3-point shots. Godbold hustled for 11 points in 30 minutes.

The Sooners came into the game with the second-worst 3-point shooting percentage (.316) in the Big 12. They were 8-for-20 (.400) from 3-point range against the Longhorns, though.

Take that shooting and mix in Taj Gray's 22 points and Kevin Bookout's eight, and OU tallied the highest shooting percentage UT has allowed this season (.544).

OU trailed 48-47, when Neal got loose on the right wing and drained a 3-pointer. P.J. Tucker tied the score, 50-50, when he put back his own miss. But Neal, a smooth-shooting junior from Mesquite Poteet, answered with another 3-pointer on the wing.

Everett then fired what appeared to be an ill-advised shot on OU's next possession. But his 21-footer kissed off the glass and splashed through the twine, giving the Sooners a 56-50 lead.

"At the time, you just think that's a lucky shot," Everett said. "But the game wasn't really over until under a minute. We just had to keep our heads right and finish the game."


AP
Oklahoma center Taj Gray is fouled by UT's Kenton Paulino as he goes up for a shot in the second half. Neal and Everett's antics were part of an 18-5 run that pushed the Sooners' lead to 65-53. Godbold came up with a circus shot of his own when he banked in a 3-pointer with 2:20 remaining.

"Two or three of those shots were bank shots," Tucker said, "and one looked like a prayer and he made it. You've got to fight through that."

Texas' LaMarcus Aldridge had 14 of his 22 points by halftime, but foul trouble limited his aggressiveness in the second half. That put more pressure on UT's guards, who were 5-for-18 from 3-point range.

E-mail [email protected]

BajaOklahoma
1/29/2006, 10:17 AM
OK, no waltz for Horns

11:41 PM CST on Saturday, January 28, 2006


NORMAN, Okla. – At the University of Texas, it is understood that different roads can lead to national titles.

The men's football team got there without breaking a sweat in the Big 12 Conference. The men's baseball team got there last spring without even winning the Big 12, losing all three regular-season games to conference champion Baylor, before beating the Bears twice when it mattered most.

As for the men's basketball team ... hold on a second.

Why are we even discussing national championship prospects for a team that lost to No. 1-ranked Duke by 31 points in December? It's not like the Longhorns wouldn't have to worry about going through the Blue Devils in March.

The thing is, though, that the Texas team that came to Lloyd Noble Center at 17-2 with a nine-game winning streak and a No. 4 national ranking has been a different team than the one that got chewed up and spit out by Duke.

Special emphasis on "has been" after Saturday night.

The Longhorns, who have turned their season around by playing killer defense, ran into a Sooners team that turned out to be hotter than anyone could have imagined.

Before a national ESPN audience, in front of a fake Napoleon Dynamite, the real Miss America and Dick Vitale (both fake and real simultaneously), the Oklahoma Sooners stated their case as more than just a threat to Texas with an 82-72 victory.

So it turns out that the Big 12 has two teams capable of making a run deep into March.

Either that, or it has none.

The victory lifted Oklahoma to 4-2 in the Big 12, a game behind the Longhorns (5-1) although the rematch, of course, will be in Austin on March 5, and the schedule favors Texas going on to win the league crown.

But we found out Saturday night that, for Texas, this is not going to be like Vince Young's unbeaten march to glory.

Texas may have been lulled to sleep by the start of Big 12 play. The Longhorns owned conference victories of 25, 20, 34, 19 and 34 again coming into Norman.

Maybe they believed that Oklahoma's inconsistent perimeter players would be the Sooners' demise.

They were nothing of the kind. In fact, Michael Neal, Terrell Everett and David Godbold made nearly 60 percent of their shots (19 for 32), and that included eight successful 3-pointers.

For the night, Oklahoma shot 54.4 percent – a higher figure than Duke nailed in its 97-66 romp past Texas.

"I thought they played really well," coach Rick Barnes said. "They made shots when we defended them, and then we had some defensive lapses that hurt us, too."

After the early losses to Duke and Tennessee, Barnes got his Longhorns refocused on being a tough defensive team. They are 15-0 when opponents fail to shoot 40 percent.

Oklahoma was only the third team to shoot 50 percent from the floor or better against Texas. All three of those teams have defeated the Longhorns.

But Texas made big strides after those back-to-back losses to Duke and Tennessee, and guard Daniel Gibson predicted that will happen again.

"This game right here isn't going to affect our confidence at all," he said. "We still know we're one of the best teams in the country. We expect to come out Wednesday against Missouri and show it."

Texas center LaMarcus Aldridge didn't do much to disappoint the half-dozen NBA scouts at courtside with 22 points and 12 rebounds. But in the second half when the game was won, Oklahoma's Taj Gray (21 points, eight rebounds) was the best big man on the floor.

In the end, it was the Sooners' remarkable 60 percent shooting after halftime that established them as at least a contender in the Big 12. And that's what cost Texas any shot at an unfettered run through the Big 12, although talk of that was quickly dismissed by Barnes.

"It was stupidity. It was like people saying the Indianapolis Colts could do it [go 16-0], and we were only six games into it," Barnes said. "This league will get better. Oklahoma's a lot like us, they lost a couple of games when they weren't healthy. That's a good team.

"These teams are really a lot alike in a lot of ways."

Probably in more ways than Texas dared to imagine before Saturday night.

E-mail [email protected]

jdsooner
1/29/2006, 10:56 AM
Much better than Berry Tramel's article in the daily disappointment yesterday!

Big Red Ron
1/29/2006, 11:27 AM
http://sports.espn.go.com/ncb/recap?gameId=260280201

crawfish
1/29/2006, 01:20 PM
I enjoyed the fact that Tim Colishaw wrote the opinion article rather than the whorn lover Kevin Blackistone who's been salivating over the whorn's dominance of late. :)

Flagstaffsooner
1/29/2006, 01:37 PM
Wanna see sheet? silly, silly horns (http://forums.hornfans.com/php/wwwthreads/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=basketball&Number=3965870&page=0&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=0&fpart=)