On This Date in OU Hoops History: Sooners Turn Up the Defense in Dramatic Win Over Dayton
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 22, 2015
(3) OU 72, (10) Dayton 66
Facing Dayton in Columbus was not an ideal setting for Oklahoma.
But for the Flyers, playing their sixth game in 10 days wasn’t the best thing either.
OU hit three early 3s and got off to a quick 9-0 lead against a fatigued Dayton squad, but the Flyers got their legs back and fed off the home crowd to build their own nine-point lead.
That’s when Buddy Hield and Jordan Woodard energized the OU defense and sent the Sooners to the Sweet Sixteen.
Oklahoma held Dayton scoreless for nine minutes, and the Flyers went 10 1/2 minutes without a field goal as the Sooners clamped down. Three straight steals and a dramatic fast-break block by Hield with a minute left turned the game around.
“I made a good hustle play,” said Hield, the Big 12 player of the year.
Lon Kruger joined Eddie Sutton as just the second coach to take four schools (Kansas State, Florida, UNLV and OU) to the Sweet Sixteen, where the Sooners (24-10) faced Michigan State in the East Regional semifinals in Syracuse.
Dayton (27-9) started the tournament at home in the First Four.
Jordan Sibert, the Flyers’ leading scorer on the season, finished with just seven points but said the slow start and long second-half drought had nothing to do with fatigue.
Coach Archie Miller, however, disagreed.
“I think to start the game our legs weren't under us,” Miller said. “But I did think we fought hard to get back.”
Dayton scrambled back from an early deficit with a 15-0 run, then in the second half used a 14-0 run to build a 49-40 lead with 13 minutes left.
But in the final 12 minutes, the Flyers got next to nothing as Hield and Woodard turned up the defense and began disrupting things with perimeter pressure and converting into fast-break points.
"We were all speaking up,” Hield said, “and we just trusted each other.”
A steal by Woodard and a fast-break layup by Hield put the Sooners up for good at 57-56 with just under six minutes to play.
“I thought we just took on some individual challenges a little bit within the team concept at that point,” Kruger said.
OU took control with a 13-0 run of its own. Hield and Woodard combined on a turnover at midcourt, but it was Hield who raced back and blocked Darrell Davis at the rim with 62 seconds to play.
The Sooners pulled away as Woodard hit seven free throws in the final minute.
Woodard finished with 16 points, while Hield had 15.
It was the first time since 2009 (Blake Griffin’s sophomore year) that Oklahoma had advanced to the tournament’s second weekend.
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