By John Shinn
Bedlam’s second verse was almost the same as the first. The exception?
Oklahoma made the plays in the final minutes and held serve at Lloyd Noble Center with a 67-60 victory over No. 17 Oklahoma State Wednesday night.
“The last 5 minutes is winning time,” OU forward Nate Carter said. “We’d been in this situation before and we have to start winning games.”
Carter scored 18 points and Longar Longar added 13. The tandem virtually carried the Sooners down the stretch.
It was a remarkable turnaround from Jan. 22 at Gallagher-Iba Arena in Stillwater. Carter scored 23 points that night, but Longar was a non-factor, scoring just two points and playing 16 minutes.
Wednesday night in front of a full-throated crowd of 12,207, he was a different player. He also added seven rebounds and four blocked shots.
Longar didn’t identify any mysteries for the turnaround.
“We just executed better and got the ball down in the post,” he said. “It all came down to execution.”
The post is where the game was decided. The Sooners and Cowboys were a combined 6-for-27 from 3-point range. The Sooners were outscored 40-32 in the paint, but made up for by going 16-for-19 from the foul line. OSU was just 5-for-14 from the charity stripe.
“Being tough is making free throws down the stretch,” OU guard Michael Neal said after scoring seven points. “We did a good job of that.”
The victory lifted the Sooners to 14-8 on the season and 5-4 in the Big 12 Conference. It was also their first win over a ranked team. They had gone winless in their previous five attempts.
OSU, which fell to 18-5 and 4-4, was smarting from an 89-77 loss at conference-cellar-dwelling Colorado last Saturday.
It received a game-high 20 points from Mario Boggan. JamesOn Curry added 17.
“A huge factor in this game was our crowd,” OU coach Jeff Capel said. “They gave us energy when I thought we were a little bit tired. They made it hard for Oklahoma State to communicate on the floor. I thought that really helped.”
OU was in position to win in a rout at the end of the first half. Nate Carter’s steal and layup gave the Sooners a 30-20 halftime edge.
They’d held the Cowboys in check throughout the first 20 minutes, but things became very interesting after the intermission.
OSU’s first 10 trips down the floor in the second half yielded points and the last resulted in a baseline jumper from Mario Boggan, giving the Cowboys a 40-39 lead.
“They came out like a ball of fire,” Capel said.
OSU was still up 48-46 with 9:15 left on another jumper from Boggan.
But Longar tied it on the other end and Carter gave the Sooners the lead for good with a layup with 8:43 left to go up 50-48.
“Every good team is going to make their run,” Carter said. “We just had to buckle down.”
Longar’s 15-footer capped a 9-2 run to make it 59-50 with 4:30 left.
The Cowboys had a chance to make it a one-point game with 2:45 remaining, but Terrel Harris missed a pair of free throws. Carter responded with a driving layup to put the Sooners up 61-56 with 2:25 to play.
“We kept battling back,” Capel said.
It didn’t take OU long to shift its focus to what lies ahead. The Sooners moved up to fifth in the Big 12 standings with the win. Continuing the upward trend means winning on the road.
“Every game we play we get tougher as a team,” Carter said.
The Sooners will need to prove that again at 3 p.m. Saturday at Baylor.
John Shinn366-3536jshinn@normantranscript.com
