The No. 8 seed Oklahoma Sooners had their NCAA Tournament run end of Monday afternoon at the hands of No. 1 overall seed Gonzaga 87-71.
Without second-leading scorer De’Vion Harmon, it was well known that the Sooners were going to need to provide their best performance of the year just to have a shot at upsetting the undefeated Bulldogs. They gave it a good effort, hanging tough all game long, but weren’t quite able to topple the title favorites.
Austin Reaves was sensational as always, scoring 27 big points and being largely the reason why Oklahoma was able to keep the game close throughout. Alondes Williams also provided very important minutes off the bench, scoring 15 of his own.
The loss puts the Sooners at 16-11 to close the season and eliminate them in the second round of the NCAA Tournament just as they did two years ago. Here are three takeaways from the season-ending loss:
Effort, effort, and more effort
One thing you can’t say about this Oklahoma team is they didn’t leave it all out on the floor. What an unbelievable display of effort this game was by the Sooners.
From the opening tip, every player was supremely active and locked in to giving it everything they had. Part of that may have helped the game wind up at a pace that was not friendly to Oklahoma, but it was still impressive to watch nonetheless.
Lon Kruger deserves a lot of credit for getting the most out of his guys in this game and getting them to lay it all out on the floor. Even when Gonzaga took a 19-point lead in the second half, they battled to work it back down to single digits. They just refused to give up.
It was impossible to not be so impressed by the emotion and will to win displayed by the Sooners on this day, the Bulldogs were just too good.