Oklahoma Blown Out at Iowa State Without Elijah Harkless
Shorthanded, even a hot start wasn’t enough to spark the Oklahoma Sooners to a win on the road.
Playing their first game without Elijah Harkless, the Sooners fell 75-54 in Ames to the Iowa State Cyclones on Saturday afternoon.
With the loss, Oklahoma stayed firmly on the NCAA Tournament bubble as the Sooners dropped to 14-13 overall on the season and 4-10 in Big 12 play. The Cyclones needed the win just as much as OU, as ISU moved to 18-9 and 5-9 on the year with the win.
Jacob Groves slid back into the starting lineup in place of Harkless, and immediately helped sparked the OU offense. Groves hit a quick pair of 3-pointers to help the Sooners storm out to an 8-0 lead, but that was the lone bright spot in an otherwise long first half.
"We really were challenging the starters to get us out of the gate," OU head coach Porter Moser said in a Zoom press conference after the game. "We wanted them to call the first time out. We really wanted to win the first four minutes and we did that. They had to call a timeout."
From there, the Cyclones outscored OU 40-17 over the remainder of the half, taking a 40-25 advantage into the locker room at halftime.
OU’s turnover problems again popped up, as the Sooners turned the ball over nine times in the first half, leading to 17 Iowa State points off turnovers.
As the offense struggled to hold on to the basketball, Oklahoma’s defense also suffered.
In the first meeting in Norman, Iowa State hit plenty of contested shots to help build an early lead, and was again efficient from the field on Saturday. Unfortunately for the Sooners, the defensive intensity took a dip in the absence of Harkless, and OU allowed the Cyclones to knock down 67 percent of their shot attempts for the contest.
"Really struggled guarding the dribbler early on," Moser said. "We switch a lot and that's really the No. 1 area where we missed Elijah. We felt it right away.
"... We couldn't guard the dribbler. And late, when we couldn't guard the dribbler, it became kicking out for 3s and they made their shots. We really felt it a lot defensively with the lack of depth to be able to switch."
But just like when the two teams met back in January, the Sooners staged a second-half charge.
C.J. Noland
Nirmalendu Majumdar / Ames Tribune-USA TODAY NETWORK
Oklahoma did a good job of feeding the ball to Jalen Hill early in the second half, and the OU forward was able to capitalize, helping spur a 12-2 run to cut the deficit to six points.
"You (could) really just tell when you started to get certain lineups in there, we’re just not good at guarding the ball and switching," Moser said. "I thought they really went downhill, then when they went downhill we were trying to plug the gaps.
"They hit the shots, and it just kind of snowballed."
Unfortunately for Moser and his team, five points was as close as OU could get, as Izaiah Brockington began to hit tough shots to extend the Cyclone lead back near double digits.
"We talked about it in the locker room after the game," Groves said after the game. "The first eight minutes of the first half we were unbelievable, and then the first 10 minutes of the second half we cut it from 15 to five. It just hurts.
"... We just got to get better from it I guess."
Brockington finished with a game-high 22 points and shot 10-of-13 from the field to fuel the Iowa State scoring outburst.
A late 15-0 Cyclones run buried the Sooners for good, as Oklahoma must now regroup ahead of Tuesday’s trip to Lubbock to play the No. 11-ranked Texas Tech Red Raiders.
Hill, Jordan Goldwire and Groves were the only Sooners to finish in double-figure scoring, with Goldwire and Hill both scoring 15 points, and Groves adding another 11.
Tip-off between the Red Raiders and the Sooners on Tuesday night is scheduled for 7 p.m., and the game will be broadcast on ESPN+.
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