It may have been ugly to some, but the way Tulsa knocked off No. 15 Kansas State was a thing of beauty to Curran Scott, Martins Igbanu and the rest of the Golden Hurricane.
Scott scored 14 points to lead all scorers, and Igbanu hit the game-winning shot to lead Tulsa to a 47-46 victory over Kansas State on Saturday afternoon in front of 5,719 rowdy fans at the Reynolds Center.
The win that sent the Tulsa students storming onto the court was only the third win over a ranked opponent in 15 opportunities in the 21 years the Golden Hurricane has played at the Reynolds Center.
"To see them come storming the court was something that was very exciting because it is something that we see every day watching college basketball when teams pull an upset," said Igbanu. "And I'm not going to lie, I've always wanted to be a part of that, and to see our crowd and our fans do that, that was something special."
Fittingly, in a defensive struggle that sometimes looked like a wrestling match with almost no fouls, the game ended on a defensive stop that sent Tulsa fans’ hearts into their stomachs.
Two Kansas State shots in the paint in the closing seconds barely missed. The final sequence started with Kansas State having the ball with 14.2 seconds left off of a timeout. The problem for the Wildcats was Tulsa had only three team fouls in the half at the time.
With fouls to give before going into the bonus, Tulsa fouled twice, and had another foul to give with the ball being inbounded with only 5.1 seconds remaining. Sterling Taplin clearly pushed Barry Brown with around three seconds left before Brown attempted his shot, but no foul was called. Brown’s five-footer over DaQuan Jeffries’ outstretched hand barely hit the front rim and bounced back.
Kamau Stokes then briefly rebounded, but Jeffries knocked the ball out of his hands. Cartier Diarra then came up with the loose ball and got off a shot from underneath the basket just before the clock expired. Luckily for Tulsa, Diarra, who finished one of 12 from the field, found his shot hitting the back of the rim and bouncing strongly back over the front rim before the massive celebration started.
“K-State is one of the best defensive teams in the country – I think they're ranked fifth or sixth in terms of defensive efficiency," said Tulsa coach Frank Haith. "Every shot was going to be tough. There were going to be no gimmes. You're going to have to make tough plays. You're going to have to make it through contact. I'm really proud of how our mindset was to play through the kind of physicality of how the game was played.”
Tulsa (7-3) led for most of the game, and led by a 45-40 margin with just under four minutes remaining until Xavier Sneed’s three-pointer (Sneed scored the last nine Kansas State points on three treys) stunned Tulsa and gave the Wildcats a 46-45 lead with 2:23 remaining.
But the 6-foot-8 Igbanu answered with a right-handed jump hook from the right side over 6-9 Makol Mawien with 1:53 on the clock to give TU the lead for good. Igbanu finished with nine points and six rebounds.
“That same shot is the shot that Coach (Haith) has been wanting me to take since I got here," Igbanu said. "I never really take it, but he made sure I had somebody working on that same shot every day.
"I had my right-hand side, which is my strong side, and just went ahead and took it."
Tulsa then forced two turnovers on the next two KSU possessions, but TU couldn’t come close to scoring on its next two possessions, either, setting up the final series of events.
The game was particularly amazing because it was a very physical contest that had neither team shoot a free throw in the second half. In fact, Kansas State, noted for its physical, relentless defense, committed only one foul in the entire second half.
The physical nature of the game and the opponent caused players like Scott to make off-balance, driving shots to the basket. Some of Scott's drives looked off balance and unorthodox, but he was incredibly effective, hitting five of six two-pointers. He was the only TU player who scored in double figures.
"They play similar to OSU as far as they get out in the passing lanes and make it harder to get out into your offense, so we had to do better getting open, back door cuts, being physical with the ball," Scott said. "But when they close out hard, you can drive on them, you can get inside, stuff like that. So, I was able to get in there and make a couple of shots.
"And then Marty, an extremely good shot at the end of the game. That was the biggest shot of the game."
“I definitely loved it from the start to the end," Igbanu said about the physicality of the game. "This is something we practice every day, we practice physical every day and we pride ourselves with that.”
Kansas State (6-2) got off to a slow start, getting down 9-2, but finally caught up just before halftime with a 25-24 lead at half. Tulsa had led by as much as eight at 18-10 after a Lawson Korita three-pointer with 10:21 left in the first half.
But the Golden Hurricane went stone cold from that point until Taplin’s driving bucket over Dean Wade with 18:28 in the second half ended a scoring drought lasting 11:53 where Tulsa was outscored 17-6.
That three-point lead and another lead by the same margin were the largest the Wildcats would see all game.
A key to stopping the Wildcats was holding Wade in check. The 6-10 Wade led the Wildcats in scoring at 15.4 points and in rebounding with 7.7 per game. Limited by first half foul trouble and a double-team Tulsa defense, Wade made only one of six shots and finished with two points and seven rebounds in 22 minutes.
“We were very aware of where he (Wade) was all the time and having high hands on him," Haith said. "They do a good job with him against the zone, flashing him and moving him out. Our communication was really, really good."
Although Sneed stepped up late for the Wildcats to lead them with 13 points and 10 rebounds, the rest of his teammates didn’t do much offensively, shooting 30.5 percent from the field and 26.3 from behind the arc (five of 19).
KSU’s struggles shooting weren’t surprising considering the Wildcats averaged just 28.5 percent on three-pointers coming into the game.
Those struggles gave Tulsa good hope of upsetting Kansas State for the second consecutive season because Tulsa usually has the most trouble with hot three-point shooting teams. When teams don’t make threes against Tulsa, it usually means a win for the Golden Hurricane.
Tulsa’s 61-54 neutral site win over Kansas State in Wichita last year featured the Wildcats, who went on to advance to the Elite Eight in the NCAA Tournament, hitting only four of 32 three-pointers (12.5 percent). The Wildcats returned all five starters from that game.
What was surprising was holding the Wildcats to 46 points when they came into the game averaging 72.7 points per game.
“It was outstanding. I can't even put it into words," Haith said of Tulsa's defense. "We fought our butts off. We executed so well in terms of how we were guarding them. There at the end, we executed the foul-game really, really well. We went man. We went zone."
Kansas State coach Bruce Weber was very complimentary of Tulsa's defense.
"They are so good at rotating and keeping compact," Weber said. "Every time I thought we had something going, they (Tulsa) were able to adjust and not let us get into any comfort zone or rhythm."
Weber wasn't surprised by Tulsa's defense, however.
“I have to give them (TU) credit. We knew it was going to be a tough game. I put on the board ‘find a way to win.’ I told them that it would come down to toughness, poise and making a play at the end of the game. I anticipated this. I didn’t hope for it, but I anticipated it. I thought we would find a way to win. We had a couple balls hang on the rim at the end."
Weber didn't blame the loss on physical play in the game.
"Right from the start, Tulsa was physical with us, totally opposite of last week’s game where there were so many fouls called that the game lasted three hours," Weber said of KSU's 83-71 loss at Marquette last Saturday. "This week there were no fouls called. We have to adjust, and every game is different.”
Wins over ranked teams have been a rarity for TU at the Reynolds Center. Of the three wins over ranked teams, the last one came against No. 9 Wichita State on Nov. 17, 2015. The only other one came in the fourth game of the arena on Jan. 15, 1999, when Tulsa defeated No. 24 TCU. Before beating Kansas State, Tulsa’s most recent win over a ranked opponent was at No. 16 SMU on Feb. 10, 2016.
As great as the wins were over OSU and Kansas State in a four-day stretch at home, what was even greater was that Tulsa finally got a chance to show what it can do against big-name competition, since most of them tend to shy away from Tulsa. It is hard enough to get even one big conference team to come to Tulsa, let alone two.
"We may not be able to do that again, probably," Haith said of getting two name teams to come to the Reynolds Center. "It was really great. I thank Bruce (Weber), and I thank Michael (OSU coach Mike Boynton) for giving us the opportunity to play, particularly when our students are here."
Haith made the comment about not getting to do that again because he knows name opponents shy away from places where they may lose. Still, that won't stop Haith from trying to schedule name opponents at home.
"In the future we still want to continue to try and do that. I think if you want to have a chance to play in postseason, you need to play in these types of games," Haith said. "Your power ranking is going to be based on what you do in non-conference."
