In a throwback game to the old Valley days, Sterling Taplin came up with the clutch play of the game in a nail-biter, and Tulsa came through with a much-needed win.
Taplin hit a five-foot runner in the lane to break a tie with 11.3 seconds remaining, lifting Tulsa to a 70-68 win over former archrival Illinois State on Wednesday night in front of 3,478 fans at the Reynolds Center.
Taplin scored 15 points to lead a classic comeback from 14 points down early in the second half in a game where Tulsa had looked dead for much of the middle part of the game. Taplin had several impressive drives to the bucket throughout the game that kept Tulsa from falling off the edge.
“Just get to the basket and try to make a play,” Taplin said of the game-winner. “Either I was going to shoot it or I was going to find a teammate.”
“Sterling is a key guy for us when he is on his game,” said TU coach Frank Haith of Taplin, who finished with five assists, two steals, and only one turnover. “He really helps us. He was on his game tonight.”
Tulsa (4-3) started its comeback from a 50-36 deficit on a Taplin bucket. The Golden Hurricane steadily fought back, and finally caught up and took the lead on a 10-0 run that started with 5:15 remaining when Junior Etou scored, was fouled, and made the free throw to give Tulsa a 67-65 lead with 2:29 left.
Illinois State (4-3) then quickly tied the game at 67-67, and neither team scored until Taplin’s bucket put Tulsa ahead for good.
After Taplin scored, ISU head coach Dan Muller got slapped with a technical foul, and Corey Henderson hit one of two free throws to increase the lead to 70-67. Then TU, taking advantage of having only five team fouls, purposely fouled twice, the last time with 3.6 seconds remaining, to put the Redbirds on the line for a one-and-one.
The strategy backfired when a rare double-lane violation was called on both Tulsa and ISU after Paris Lee hit the first free throw. Lee had missed the second free throw on purpose and had failed to hit the rim, but Tulsa was called for being early in the lane.
In a nightmare scenario, the Redbirds had the arrow in its favor, getting the ball back, down 70-68, with a chance to win with 3.5 seconds left. Fortunately for Tulsa, Deontae Hawkins’ three-point attempt for the win was well-guarded and badly missed, and the Golden Hurricane rebounded the ball to end the game.
“One thing that isn’t in our playbook is the double-lane violation,” Haith said, laughing. “We haven’t practiced that one. Maybe we’ll go back and practice that one.
“Hey it happened, and now we have to have some toughness and get a stop, and we did a good job there.”
Etou also scored 15 points to lead Tulsa, while freshman post player Will Magnay, in his first college start, had a double-double with 10 points and 13 rebounds.
“He’s really taken off. His growth and maturation has been growing,” Haith said of Magnay. “You can see it in front of our eyes. The more confident he gets, the better he becomes. He’s such a presence. He does more things than show up in the stats. He comes up with a lot of plays.”
It was an amazing victory considering that leading scorer Jaleel Wheeler, averaging 15.8 points coming into the game, didn’t score until Tulsa was down 14 points, and finished with only six points. Also, Pat Birt was ice cold, hitting only one of 10 shots from the field to score four points, including none in the second half.
Henderson, seemingly in the dog house with only two first half minutes, played 17 second half minutes and finished with eight points, including some clutch plays down the stretch.
“We slowly chipped away at it,” Magnay said. “We just got two at a time and chipped away and stuck to our principles.”
It was a welcomed sight for old time TU fans to see the former heated rivals play again. The rivalry was at its hottest point during the Nolan Richardson era from 1980-1985, when rugged Illinois State faced Nolan Richardson’s pressing, explosive Golden Hurricane.
Illinois State coach Bob Donewald was a hated coach by TU fans after he referred to Richardson as a “polka-dotted thug.” One of TU’s greatest wins of the era was an overtime road win in ISU’s converted airplane hangar in 1985. Tulsa’s first NCAA bid in 27 years came with a home court, Convention Center win in the MVC championship game in 1982.
Ironically, Muller was a player for Illinois State the last time the two teams met in the semifinals of the Missouri Valley tournament in 1996. That Tulsa win catapulted the Golden Hurricane to the MVC tourney title in their last season in the Valley.
Tulsa had gotten out to a hot start Wednesday night, leading 12-4 before the Redbirds caught fire with a seemingly endless barrage of three pointers. ISU led 36-32 at halftime, and hit 12 of 28 from behind the arc for the game.
The Redbirds, led by Lee and MiKyle McIntosh with 18 and 15 points, respectively, went through a stretch in the middle of the game where it got a lot of open looks and looked like it couldn’t miss on three-pointers.
But Tulsa’s defense tightened down the stretch, allowing the Golden Hurricane to make its remarkable comeback.
“We didn’t panic,” Haith said. “We talked about staying together, trusting the process, and keep getting stops. For a young team that hasn’t been in a lot of tight games, our execution was really good.”
Tulsa’s next game is Saturday afternoon against OSU at the Reynolds Center.
“It gives us a lot of momentum going into our next game,” Taplin said of the victory.
