Oklahoma basketball’s season comes to an end in the second round of the NCAA Tournament, falling to No. 1 Gonzaga 87-71.
The 2020-21 Oklahoma Sooners basketball season has come to an end as the No. 8 seed Sooners fell at the hands of the No. 1 overall seed Gonzaga Bulldogs on Monday afternoon 87-71 in Indianapolis.
Lon Kruger’s team came out guns blazing with high energy and mostly kept that up all game long, but to beat the title favorites you have to be essentially perfect and Oklahoma wasn’t quite able to sustain quite the level of play needed to spring the upset. Gonzaga was simply too good in this game.
“Gonzaga is good,” Kruger said postgame. “They’re really good. They cut hard, move the ball well. Mark (Few) does a terrific job. A lot of guys that play unselfishly and play the game the right way, and I thought we got a little better feel for the pace of things in the second half and cut into it a little bit, couldn’t quite get back to make them too nervous.”
A seemingly pivotal stretch in the game came toward the end of the first half. With just over five minutes to play until the break, Elijah Harkless put home a layup to trim the Bulldogs lead down to 33-30. From there, Gonzaga would close the half on a 13-4 run to take a 12-point lead into the locker room. The Sooners were trying to climb their way back from there on out.
“First few minutes was back and forth, I thought both teams scored pretty easily at that time,” Kruger said. “The last five minutes of the first half, they widened it to 12, and again, they’re good. They just keep the pressure on you, they keep coming at you, and if you turn it over carelessly or if you take a shot that leads into transition for them, they make you pay for it. That happened a couple times, and again, we ended up fighting from behind the last 20 minutes.”
Oklahoma was led once again by senior Austin Reaves who was superb yet again scoring 27 points on 11 of 17 shooting, albeit in a losing effort. He did everything he could to will his team to stay close, but the Bulldogs were unrelenting and proved to be too much.
“I mean, he left it all out there,” Kruger said of Reaves. “That’s what you want for each of your guys, and certainly he did that. He battled and did fight foul trouble a little bit, and yeah, just what a great year. What a great year he had. He certainly left it all out there today.”
The second-leading scorer was a somewhat unlikely source in fellow senior Alondes Williams, who put up 15 key points off the bench to help keep the Sooners hanging around. In a game without second-leading scorer De’Vion Harmon due to COVID-19 protocols and where third-leading scorer Brady Manek scored just three points, he was vital to giving the team a shot.
“Yeah, Alondes was great,” Kruger said. “He’s quick off the dribble, he’s powerful at the rim. Yeah, did a good job. Did a really good job, got in the paint for us, finished some big plays. Yeah, he played well.”
Defensively, Oklahoma held Gonzaga to 49 percent shooting from the field, which is actually low for the Bulldogs, but still allowed 87 points and for the gamed to be played at a pace that wasn’t in the Sooners favor. The bottom line of this game was quite simple: Gonzaga was just better.
Perhaps having Harmon available could have made a difference in the final result, that is certainly reasonable to argue given what he could have provided offensively, but without him it was going to take a supreme effort to pull off this upset. Kruger’s group gave it their best shot, but it wasn’t quite enough on this day.
The game was very intense and physical throughout, even seeing some chippy moments at times. The most notable of those coming in the final moments after a hard foul by Harkless on Bulldogs’ star Jalen Suggs earned him a flagrant one.
“I mean, we play in the Big 12,” Austin Reaves said on the intensity of the game. “The physicality was about the same. We’re used to that kind of physical play. The foul down the stretch, I mean, probably looked worse than what it was. I felt like he (Harkless) was actually trying to go for the ball. He’s one of my best friends on the team. He’s not a dirty player. He isn’t out there trying to hurt anybody, just to clear that up. But the refs call what the refs call. Can’t change that. But he’s not out there trying to hurt anybody, just to clear that up.”
While Oklahoma certainly gave incredible effort and should be proud of the way they played against the nation’s best, it won’t provide much solace in the short term. The pain of another season ending in the second round of the NCAA Tournament will undoubtedly linger, especially given the heights the team had reached at points throughout the regular season.
“It’s hard to see right now, but a couple days from now, we’ll — I don’t even know if it’ll be a couple days,” Reaves said. “We’ll still probably be mad. But down the road you’ll look back and you’ll be like, damn, we really did some special things. It’s all about the relationships that you get to create with a lot of different guys. But right now you’ve got a bitter taste in your mouth, but one of these days we’ll look back and be like, we had a good year.”
The Sooners close their year at 16-11 and will now head to an offseason with a lot of question marks regarding the makeup of the team going forward. All seniors are allowed to return to the team next year thanks to a special COVID-19 waiver provided by the NCAA, but it is unclear if any will take advantage of that at this point.
Only Kur Kuath has announced his decision to leave school as it stands today, with Austin Reaves’, Brady Manek’s and Alondes Williams’ status for next year still being yet to be declared publicly.
