Not A Football Blog: Oklahoma Somehow Beat Top-10 Alabama And Achieved Something No Team Has Done Since 1974

Of course it's not a football blog, Oklahoma wouldn't beat Alabama in football. We've seen that story numerous times. We're talking basketball here and Oklahoma despite not having Austin Reaves somehow won this game. We'll talk about officiating in a second because it was a huge story, but Oklahoma won this game because of 1) its defense and 2) they just punked Alabama on the boards. They held Alabama to 2 points for the first 5.5 minutes of the game and 1 point for the last 3:38 of the game. It's not even like Oklahoma was running anything crazy defensively. They sagged just enough to contest shots but more importantly keep Bama players in front of them. Then they had the rotations to cut the corner kick out off and it just disrupted Alabama's offense. Part of the problem of relying on that space offense and using the dribble is you HAVE to beat your guy off the bounce. 

But how about this month for Oklahoma? First team since 1974 to get 4 top-10 wins in a month. This is what they did: 

And yeah, the officiating was horrendous, especially on Herb Jones. They had 3 foul calls on him in the second half where 1) he got punched in the face and was bleeding, 2) he handed the ball off on a dribble hand off and 3) had a clean steal. It was brutal for arguably the best player on Bama and turned out to be big calls just relative to points: 

Despite all that Bama still had a chance to win. Shackelford missed two layups down the stretch, Reese missed two WIDE open threes, Petty missed a free throw. They just blew their chance, but it's credit to Oklahoma and why we should start talking about them more. I will be looking at their odds on the Barstool Sportsbook to make a Final Four after today. They are still working Brady Manek back into the lineup and he was huge today off the bench after dealing with Covid. They don't have a bad loss - yeah, the lost to Xavier by 22 but that gets capped in the NET and Xavier should make the NCAA Tournament. Lon Kruger just coaches his ass off (and has a rocket for an arm)

There's just something about this team that has my attention. Yeah, they are probably the 5th, maybe the 6th best team in the Big 12 because the Big 12 is loaded but they are figuring shit out. The development of Elijah Harkless, who is a fucking pest defensively, also did this to seal the game: 

Any AP voter that has them in the 20s needs to be fired immediately on Monday.