WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — One factor not addressed by the boxscore of the Oklahoma women’s last basketball game of the season, a 79-75 overtime loss to Notre Dame in the NCAA Tournament’s second round inside Mackey Arena, had to do with the Irish’s Charel Allen and every player in a Sooner uniform.
That’s because the boxscore only includes names and numbers. It does not include year in school. But if anybody ever put together a senior performance, it was Allen, the senior guard, who played the game of her life to advance Notre Dame into the Sweet 16 where Sunday it will meet Tennessee at the Ford Center in Oklahoma City.
Allen achieved a career high scoring mark in regulation, yet didn’t stop until she had amassed 35 points, including seven in the overtime period, helping the Irish recover from an immediate post-regulation five-point deficit.
Allen put up three 3s and made them all. She attempted 12 free throws and made them all.
Irish coach Muffet McGraw said it was her senior guard’s refusal to lose that kept Notre Dame going. Sooner coach Sherri Coale acknowledged the game Allen played and her advanced seasoning were hardly coincidence.
“There’s no doubt about the will of a senior in the NCAA Tournament, particularly in an overtime game with the clock running down,” Coale said. “The thing about experience is you have to test before you get the lesson and that’s where are kids are right now. They’ll be better next time.”
Two years ago, OU went 19-0 through the Big 12 Conference but lost in the Sweet 16 to Stanford. The Sooners struggled much of last season but rebounded in time to win another conference regular-season and tournament title. Still, in a season their national championship hopes were expressed openly and freely, they made another Sweet 16 exit at the hands of Ole Miss.
This time, following a regular-season swan dive, all OU wanted was to reach the Sweet 16 in Oklahoma City. Once there the Sooners would go as far as their resurgence and their fans could take them. But they would be taken nowhere by their seniors. There were no seniors.
So, the good news is everybody’s back.
The bad news is, but for a pair of incoming (and unproven) freshman guards, OU returns a team that bowed out of March Madness in the round of 32: five starters and a bench that never really developed.
“It’s always disappointing when you lose, no matter where it is,” said Courtney Paris, who will soon be a three-time consensus All-American, but has yet to play a basketball game in the Elite Eight or Final Four. “We’ve just got to keep working. Work hard over the summer and get ready for next year.”
While it may seem wrong the best player to come through the program has yet to get beyond the Sweet 16, how OU allowed the Irish to get back in the game and eventually prevail is no mystery.
The statistic that haunted OU all season long passed judgment again. Averaging around 19 turnovers coming in, the Sooners committed 24. Coale called it an “ugly number” and acknowledged a pair of coaching decisions she might have made differently, one in the midst of a funk of giveaways that allowed Notre Dame to tie the game late and the other a calculated risk that might have eliminated some of the gaffes.
As OU gave it away and the Irish rallied, she did not call timeout.
“I almost did a couple of times,” Coale said. “But I felt like we’d be all right.”
The other was her hesitation to get Danielle Robinson and Amanda Thompson back in the game more quickly after each had committed their fourth foul. The Irish made their rally while the two Sooners sat the bench.
“Probably waited a little too long to get those guys back in the game, truthfully,” she said. “The way it was being called I felt like we needed them in the final 4 minutes, but I didn’t know if they would last that long.”
Placed in the same position again, Coale, just like her players, will have that much more experience from which to draw. However, all must wait another seven months to give it try.
Clay Horning
366-3526
cfhorning@normantranscript.com
OU Sports
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