One down, postseason to go, as Sooners offer championship formula against Gators
If there was any mystery, the Oklahoma women solved it during the third quarter Thursday afternoon in Greenville, South Carolina.
The second round of the SEC women’s basketball tournament but the Sooners’ first game in it, they entered the second half leading Florida by just two points.
It was not a good sign.
The Gators had led the Sooners the vast majority of the two teams’ meeting on Feb. 12 inside Lloyd Noble Center.
As she often does, post Raegan Beers committed her second foul with 1:50 remaining in the first quarter and spent the rest of the half on the bench.
Probably the Sooners would pull the game out. They’d yet to lose this season after leading the half. Up only a bucket, they were at least ahead.
But you never know about this team, so often its own worst enemy, so often requiring losing be put on the table for it to get out of its own head and play to triumph rather survive.
So here it came, the third quarter and which band of Sooners might we see?
As it turned out, it was the band, here and there, for short periods and sometimes longer, capable of appearing to be the best team in the nation.
OU, the No. 12 team in the NCAA’s NET rankings, the No. 7 team in the Associated Press Top 25 and the recipient of an NCAA tournament No. 3 seed in ESPN’s bracketologist Charlie Creme’s latest report, to be sure, is not the nation’s best team.
Still, there are these moments …
In a contest they would go on to win 82-64, after Sahara Williams threw the ball away to begin the frame and after Me’arah O’Neal missed a left-of-the-top-of-the-key 3 that would have given the Gators the lead, here’s what happened.
Aaliyah Chavez, six seconds after grabbing a rebound under Florida’s basket, hit a 13-foot left-side elbow jumper and the race was on.
From that moment, with 9:29 left in the quarter, until Beers, Chavez, Payton Verhulst and Vann executed a full-court fast break with 6:25 remaining in the third quarter, OU outscored Florida 14-2 to lead 54-40.
On one end, they were just going, the way they go when all the clunkiness has been removed from their game.
Beers scored four points during the spurt, each basket assisted by Williams. She assisted Vann on another bucket.
To go with the assists, Williams hit a pair of transition 2s, assisted by Chavez and Verhulst.
Before closing the run, in the middle of it, Vann added a putback.
“We knew we needed to come out and play with energy,” Beers said. “Obviously, we were still in that first half. We can’t come out like that. We have to adjust … We had to come out in the third quarter knowing we had to put the foot on the gas.”
On the other end of the court, Florida was frazzled by OU’s pace and the effectiveness of it, suffering a three-minute span of utter disjointedness.
OU played fine defense, too, making an already staggered opponent remain frazzled.
Out of all rhythm, the Gators hit 1 of 6 shots during the span and turned the ball over three times.
It looked like fun and it was.
“We’re 100 percent at our best when we have fun,” Sooner coach Jennie Baranczyk said. “We still want to play tough. We still want to play hard. But we’re really good together when we set each other up and we play together on both ends.”
Mystery solved.
If OU is to go on a championship run in Greenville, or a Final Four run in the coming NCAA tournament, it will happen because of spans just like that.
Spans where the Sooners are moving fast, but together. Spans where they don’t relax defensively no matter how much success they’re having offensively. Spans in which they take care of the ball.
Florida was the recipient of 19 OU turnovers, at least three or four too many. Yet, during that third-quarter run, the Sooners did not turn it over once. In the entire frame, OU turned the ball over three times and outscored Florida 27-7.
“We definitely came out and played hard after halftime,” Chavez said. “Our energy was great, we were passing ahead. We were playing Oklahoma basketball for sure.”
Playing just 18 minutes, Beers led the Sooners with 18 points and seven rebounds, eclipsing the 2,000-point mark for her collegiate career.
Chavez, though she suffered five turnovers, added 17 points and three assists.
Vann added 14 points, all in the second half. Brooklyn Stewart, in long relief of Beers, added 12.
Fun, fun, OU meets sixth-ranked and fourth-seeded LSU, coached by the relentless and inimitable Kim Mulkey, at 1:30 p.m. Friday.
The Tigers are sure to have other ideas, but from the Sooners’ perspective, it’s just another race to find their best selves.
Thursday, they found it for a quarter, playing well enough the rest of the way.
Friday, maybe more.
They need more.
It’s March.