Buddy Hield after hitting the three against Texas.
Blake Griffin after one of his emphatic dunks.
Oklahoma after beating its fourth top-10 opponent in the same month with a limited crowd.
It all felt the same.
“I thought the crowd was in it the entire way,” said Oklahoma head coach Lon Kruger. “I think they recognized early that it was going to be a tough ballgame. The crowd was great. Back to back big impact on games in back to back weekends.”
The Lloyd Noble Center shook in a way it hasn’t in a long time on Saturday, providing the true high-level home-court advantage that makes college basketball so great. A piece of the game that has often been missing in the COVID-19 world.
“It was a really good crowd, probably the best one this year for sure,” Brady Manek said. “What we had today, that was loud enough. We had a really good crowd, a lot of people came out, and it was a good feeling to have people behind us. I do think we fed off of them. They kept the energy of the game up.”
The Sooners hosted No. 9 Alabama on Saturday as part of the Big 12/SEC Challenge hoping to make history. They were attempting to be the first team in 47 years, and just the third team ever, to beat four top-10 teams in a single month.
Despite being down two starters in Austin Reaves and Alondes Williams, they managed to find a way to bring home the win with supreme effort and defensive intensity Oklahoma has hung its hats on all year.
“The guys did a good job of getting to their shooters,” Kruger said after the game. “I thought the key was the guys did a pretty good job of guarding the ball.”
“I think early on they (Alabama) were surprised at how well we play defense,” Elijah Harkless said. “They didn’t play a lot of Big 12 teams. You know, the SEC, they’re kinda down right now.”
Oklahoma’s 66-61 defeat of the Crimson Tide was their third consecutive against a top-10 team continuing a stretch that puts the Sooners on the map.
“Any time you can beat a top-10 team of course it’s great,” Kruger said. “It’s huge, any time you can win a game like that. It’s big from a resume standpoint, big from a confidence standpoint. and momentum is continuing to move in the right direction. So the wins you never take for granted.”
With Reaves and Williams both missing the game due to COVID-19 protocols, a lot was going to be needed from the normal rotational players to step up and pick up the slack.
It had been a really rough go for Brady Manek the last several games after his bout with COVID-19, and this one was looking to follow that same trend for a long while. But, a key bucket while drawing a foul with just over 12 minutes left in the game seemed to shake off all of the frustration.
He shortly after hit a big three-pointer that got the crowd fired up. Manek finished the day with 12 key points and six rebounds including multiple important ones down the stretch.
“Finally seeing that three go in was good,” Manek said. “Hit the front of the rim about eight times it felt like tonight, and I needed to hit one and I hit it at a big time right after that and-one.”
It’s been since Hied’s final season that a team has had an entire fanbase wrap themselves around a basketball team.
They play with an edge and an effort that the fans covet. The players and coaches know it, too. Kruger’s fist pumping and intensity has risen, the energy from the bench players not in the game for things like big rebounds.
It’s nostalgia, really. Football and basketball are taking people back to early 2000s.
“This group has been great,” Kruger said. “To see the progress, to see their intentionally trying to get better individually, they spend a ton of time in the gym on their own. You know, shots in the morning, shots before practice, after practice. So any time teams invest like that, it’s fun to watch them get results that they deserve.”
While the stretch the Sooners are on has been unprecedented and remarkable to watch play out, they are far from satisfied and will be looking to keep it rolling through the end of the season. That starts with a quick turnaround against another strong opponent in No. 10 Texas Tech on Monday night in Lubbock.
“This is a special group,” Harkless said. “We got to be special. We’re never satisfied. Tomorrow we’re getting back to work and I think he (Lon Kruger) does a great job of never letting us be satisfied.
“We got a win tonight, we’ll celebrate that. But tomorrow is a new day. and a new opponent.”
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