The Oklahoma Sooners season came to a close in the second round of the NIT after falling to St. Bonaventure 70-68 at the Lloyd Noble Center.
Umoja Gibson led the way for the Oklahoma Sooners with 26 points on 10 of 17 shooting and 6 of 11 from three. Despite a 47.3% shooting night from the floor, Jalen Hill (13 points) was the only other player to score in double figures.
Jaren Holmes led the way for St. Bonaventure with 23 points. He was 8 of 12 from the field and was perfect on all four three-point attempts.
The Sooners took a three-point lead into halftime, and the two sides traded buckets for the first 10 minutes of the second half. The Bonnies opened up an eight-point lead with 10:43 to go, and the Sooners had just one lead the rest of the way.
St. Bonaventure came up with the clutch stops down the stretch, including Oklahoma’s final possession of the season. After Umoja Gibson’s three closed the margin to one point, Dominic Welch made the second of two free throws to put the lead back to two.
The Sooners had a chance to tie the game at the end. After clearing out the right side of the frontcourt, Jordan Goldwire drove to the basket. With the Bonnies defense collapsing toward the Sooners’ point guard, he made a cross-court pass to Marvin Johnson standing in the left corner. Johnson corralled the ball and pump-faked, allowing his defender to go by before driving to the basket and putting up a floater that just missed. Oklahoma attempted to take the ball away, but St. Bonaventure was able to clear the ball up the court as time expired.
It’s a rough end to a season that provided a promising glimpse of the future of Oklahoma Sooners basketball under head coach Porter Moser.
