Oklahoma Comfortably Takes Down Missouri in Final Home Game

NORMAN — Oklahoma closed an otherwise disappointing season at the Lloyd Noble Center on a high note.

The Sooners took down Missouri — likely an NCAA Tournament team — 80-64 on Tuesday for their third win in a row. OU’s win avenges its 88-87 overtime loss to the Tigers on the road in January.

Oklahoma improved to 16-14 overall and 6-11 in SEC play with the victory, while Mizzou dropped to 20-10 and 10-7 with the loss.

Here are three takeaways from the game:

Green light from deep

Similar to many of Oklahoma’s wins this season, the Sooners shot exceptionally from deep on Tuesday.

OU shot 55 percent from deep, making 12 of its 22 attempts on 3-pointers.

Five different Sooners — Jadon Jones, Nijel Pack, Xzayvier Brown, Kirill Elatontsev and Derrion Reid — logged multiple made threes. Tae Davis also made one 3-pointer.

"I think it’s huge for this team," Pack said. "We have a lot of shooters on the team, and it comes from our shot selection getting a lot better. The more we continue to move the ball and find each other, we’re going to continue to see threes fall like that."

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Jones, a senior, was Oklahoma’s best sharpshooter against the Tigers, as he went 3-for-3 on 3-pointers.

In addition to OU’s excellence from beyond the arc, the Sooners shot 62.2 percent from the field. Jones paced Oklahoma’s offense with a team-high 13 points.

Missouri, on the other hand, struggled offensively. The Tigers committed 16 turnovers and shot 33 percent on 3-pointers.

Sooners hold their own down low

Though Missouri held the significant size advantage, Oklahoma held its own down low.

The Sooners outrebounded the Tigers 28-26. Missouri outscored Oklahoma 28-26 in the paint, but the two-point disparity down low was much smaller than the Sooners faced in their losses to Florida, Arkansas and Alabama.

Center Mohamed Wague scored 11 points and grabbed seven rebounds, marking his fourth game in a row reaching double figures.

OU’s strong performance on the glass was a stark contrast from its first game against the Tigers. In that game, the Tigers outrebounded the Sooners 41-29 and collected 17 offensive rebounds to OU’s five.

Too little, too late — probably

The win over Missouri is Oklahoma’s third in a row. OU defeated Auburn at home last Tuesday before beating LSU on the road on Saturday.

Still, it seems like a longshot that the Sooners will make the NCAA Tournament.

The Sooners lost nine games in a row from Jan. 7 to Feb. 7, dropping nine games in a row in that stretch. Oklahoma has won five of seven games since then, but there’s no erasing a losing streak as lengthy as that one.

OU came into Tuesday’s game ranked No. 62 in the NET rankings, which are used heavily by the NCAA Tournament selection committee. Though Oklahoma will almost certainly move up a few spots after beating the Tigers, it won’t instantly put the Sooners near the bubble.

For OU to have a realistic chance at making the tourney as an at-large, the Sooners must win on the road against Texas and go on a deep run in the SEC Tournament, which will be held next week in Nashville.

"We’re playing our best basketball," OU coach Porter Moser said. "We’ve gotta keep believing in a path. We’ve been saying, ‘One game at a time.’ We’ve talked about there’s an urgency to it, and these guys have played with an urgency."