KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Nothing is easy in the Big 12 women’s tournament. What happened in the regular season doesn’t seem to matter at Municipal Auditorium.
What happened Saturday proved it.
Oklahoma’s last regular season game was a 33-point thrashing of Oklahoma State at Lloyd Noble Center. Six days later in the tournament semifinals, it was trailing the Cowgirls by one with 7:48 to go.
“It would be lovely if they could all be like last Sunday in Norman against Oklahoma State where everything goes in, every defensive possession is not so urgent,” OU coach Sherri Coale said. “But it can’t always be that way.”
It wasn’t Saturday, but OU toppled OSU 74-68 anyway to advance to today’s championship game against Texas A&M, which stunned previously undefeated Nebraska, 80-70, in the other semifinal game.
The postseason Bedlam meeting bore no resemblance to the final postseason meeting. OU seemed to be shooting at a goal four-feet wide six days ago.
Saturday everything was regulation and everything was contested with intensity. The Cowgirls (23-10) were a confident bunch after knocking off Missouri and Iowa State to reach the semifinals.
All-world point guard Andrea Riley had 32 points with eight minutes to go, but OU’s Danielle Robinson beat her to a spot 30 feet from the basket with 7:30 left and took a charge. At the time, it didn’t look like much. But the game changed right there.
Riley didn’t score again. OU (23-9) took the lead about 90 seconds later and never let it go.
There was little doubt beating OSU starts and comes pretty close to ending with defending Riley, who scored 32 points on 12-for-30 shooting.
“You just have to contest everything. Just keep your hands up at all times because her range is incredible. So that’s the mindset going in,” Robinson said. “She’s going to hit some. That’s what she does.”
Riley hit her first six shots from the field to propel the Cowgirls to a 12-point lead early in the first half. When she cooled, though, the Sooners were too deep to be denied their fifth trip to the conference tournament’s title game.
OSU was a two-woman team on the offensive end. Tegan Cunningham scored 21 points. She and Riley combined to take 48 of the Cowgirls’ 71 shots, made all but seven of their 28 field goals and all but two of their 10 free throws.
The Sooners had balance.
Robinson scored a team-high 19 points. Amanda Thompson scored 17, in addition to a game-high 18 rebounds. Nyeshia Stevenson added 15 with eight coming in a 79-second span early in the second half. Abi Olajuwon added 11.
“That’s why OU is a top 10 team, because they have four legitimate scoring threats out there,” OSU coach Kurt Budke said.
Still, it was razor tight throughout the second half.
Stevenson’s outburst gave OU its first lead with 17:50 to go. It seesawed back and forth until Olajuwon hit a jumper with 6 minutes left, putting OU up 63-62.
Riley, who averaged 37.3 points in three Big 12 tournament games, didn’t score in the final 8:24. She missed her final nine shots.
In a showdown between the conference’s two best guards, Robinson won out in the final minutes. She buried a jumper with a 1:20 to go to give OU a four-point lead and added four free throws in the final 38 seconds to help the Sooners hold on.
“She’s a great player,” Riley said of Robinson. “She really knows how to lead her team and she just led them to a victory tonight. She did whatever she had to do.”
That was the one thing that carried over from the regular season.
John Shinn 366-3536 jshinn@normantranscript.com
