On This Day in OU Hoops History: Sooners Advance to 2002 Final Four
Oklahoma’s 2020 college basketball season came to an unceremonious and premature end when the NCAA declared this year’s tournament would not be played due to measures intended to stop the Coronavirus pandemic.
The Sooners just might have assembled the kind of team — a Big Three scoring triumvirate and a collection of young, athletic talent — that could have possibly made a good postseason run.
This team’s resume will always be incomplete.
Instead of using three weeks this spring to witness OU basketball history, SI Sooners will relive it. From now until April 4 — the date that was supposed to be this year’s Final Four semifinals — we’ll look back on Oklahoma’s most memorable NCAA Tournament games from that date in history.
MARCH 23, 2002
(2) Oklahoma 81, (12) Missouri 75
Familiar opponents so often present the toughest battles.
Fresh off an 88-67 throttling of third-seeded Arizona in the Sweet 16, Kelvin Sampson’s Sooners stood 40 minutes away from their first Final Four appearance since the halcyon days of Wayman Tisdale and Mookie Blaylock.
All they had to do was escape a hungry Big 12 foe with a full head of steam and a chance to make March Madness history. Put that way, the Sooners’ matchup with 12th-seeded Missouri sounded a bit more daunting than the bracketologists might have suggested.
The Tigers, led by future NBA draft selections Kareem Rush and Rickey Paulding, were looking to become the lowest seed in history to make a Final Four appearance. Quin Snyder’s team had opened the tournament with upset wins over fifth-seeded Miami and fourth-seeded Ohio State. Mizzou then dispatched No. 8 seed UCLA, which itself had knocked off regional top seed Cincinnati in a double-overtime thriller.
But that was as far as the Tigers’ Cinderella run would extend, as Hollis Price and Oklahoma fought tooth and nail to an 81-75 win in San Jose to emerge as West Regional champions.
In the first half, Mizzou matched the Sooners blow for blow. Rush’s two free throws with 2:44 left gave the Tigers a brief 32-31 lead. But Oklahoma closed with a 10-2 run, capped by Price’s contested 3-pointer at the halftime buzzer. The junior guard led the Sooners with 18 points and four of the team’s seven triples.
OU never actually trailed in the second half, but couldn’t seem to shake the pesky Tigers. Time after time, the Sooners strung together several consecutive buckets, only to see Mizzou roar back with a run of its own. With 10:43 to play, Paulding, who led all scorers with 22 points, had a chance to even the score at 54 with a pair of free throws. However, he could only convert one of two, and the Sooners retained the advantage.
In a game in which both teams combined to shoot 66 free throws, the Sooners won the war of attrition. Rush rode the bench for much of the second half with four fouls, but re-entered when Missouri center Arthur Johnson fouled out with 2:53 to play. The sweet-shooting phenom promptly nailed a 3 to cut Oklahoma’s lead to 70-67.
Then OU forward Aaron McGhee, playing with four fouls, hit the back-breaker. Left alone on the right wing, the 6-foot-8 big man buried a triple of his own with 2:13 remaining. Rush tried to answer back, but his deep 3-point attempt was off the mark. He’d foul out moments later with 17 points to his credit. After a few free throws and formalities, OU was headed to the Final Four.
Price’s 18 points led the way, but three other Sooners notched double figures as well. Ebi Ere poured in 17 and McGhee scored 15, while Quannas White added 12 points, seven rebounds and seven assists.
Perhaps most impressive was that the Sooners played the closing stretch with their entire rotation in foul trouble. Price, McGhee, Ere and Jabahri Brown carried four apiece, while White and Daryan Selvy had three each.
Nevertheless, the Sooners punched their ticket to Atlanta, and left no doubt that they were the class of the Big 12 in a wild 2002 season.
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