Norman — About 10 minutes after Oklahoma’s 69-54 loss to No. 23 Texas A&M Saturday, Ryan Wright, Beau Gerber and Tony Crocker said good-bye to the Lloyd Noble Center crowd. Tears flowed and emotions were expressed on Senior Day.
“It seems like yesterday we were here running sprints in the summer on the practice court,” said Gerber, the former walk-on who made his first career start Saturday. “I still remember a bunch of important games.”
Saturday’s game, however, was one anyone involved with Sooner basketball will try hard to forget. It’s hard to believe it can get any worse than the performance in OU’s eighth straight loss.
OU coach Jeff Capel watched the emotion Wright, Gerber and Crocker expressed to the crowd and was pleased to see it.
“You can’t have emotion like that unless something means something to you. Unless you care deeply or passionately about something,” he said. “Our younger guys need to take a cue from that. This younger generation, I don’t know if they know how to care about anything.”
Capel never lost control of his emotions Saturday’s regular-season finale, but it was clear the frustration of coaching this team has taken a toll.
“It all comes back to me. I’ve done a poor job,” Capel said. “I’ve always thought one of my strengths was figuring out what buttons to push and how to get the best out of guys. I haven’t been able to do that this year. It’s been frustrating to me. It’s been frustrating for people to watch. It’s been embarrassing. I’m ashamed.”
There was little that happened on the court for Sooners to feel good about. They led by as many as eight midway through the first half and only trailed 36-32 at halftime.
Then the Sooners made five shots in the second half while the Aggies (22-8, 11-5 Big 12) kept getting easy baskets. Khris Middleton led Texas A&M with 15 points. Bryan Davis added 13.
It was the fifth loss during this losing streak that was by double digits and the Sooners fourth at home. The Aggies didn’t need a map to find the path of least resistance.
Tommy Mason-Griffin scored 16 points to lead the Sooners, but was just 4-for-12 from the field. He also committed four of the Sooners’ 15 turnovers. Wright and Andrew Fitzgerald added 10 points each.
Crocker, who was playing in his 131st career game, had one he’d like to forget. He scored four points and fouled out with 6 minutes to go. Middleton had a breakaway dunk. It would have been the Aggies’ third straight layup or dunk in as many possessions. No other Sooner stepped up to stop him. Crocker at least gave it a shot.
The sequence was a microcosm of the entire season.
“We didn’t concentrate on certain things. Just to have the security that somebody would be on the help side or something like that,” Crocker said. “Really, throughout the whole year, we couldn’t really get stops on defense.”
Defense, or lack of it, has been sinking the Sooners most of the season. Saturday marked the seventh straight game they allowed an opponent to shoot at least 50 percent from the field.
The loss locked OU into the 10th seed for the Big 12 tournament. It will face seventh-seeded Oklahoma State at 6 p.m. Wednesday at Sprint Center in Kansas City, Mo.
Capel wasted no effort trying look at the bright side following Saturday’s game. Five times he said the Sooners’ woes could be pinned on his inability to push the right buttons with this team.
Something will have to drastically change for the Sooners’ season to extend past the Big 12 tournament’s first round.
“It’s important for us to play well and get a win. We haven’t played well in a while since we beat Texas here (Feb. 6),” he said. “We have to have better effort, better discipline in order to get that.”
John Shinn 366-3536 jshinn@normantranscript.com
