173 - 101

SETTING THE SCENE

The date was Nov. 29, 1989, and Oklahoma was opening its ninth season of the Tubbs era against U.S. International, an NCAA Division I opponent from San Diego. The Sooners were coming off a two-year record of 65-10 and were No. 1 NCAA Tournament seeds each of those two seasons. They reached the national title game in 1988 and advanced to the Sweet 16 in 1989.

"We thought we could be good, and we had kind of been on a roll. We still had guys who could run the floor and who could press."
Former Head Coach Billy Tubbs

Even though OU was ranked No. 16 in the initial 1989-90 AP poll, Tubbs knew he had some huge shoes to fill from the year before. Seniors Stacey King (26.0 ppg) and Mookie Blaylock (20.0 ppg) were the No. 6 and No. 12 overall picks, respectively, in the 1989 NBA Draft, and Tyrone Jones, the team’s third-leading scorer at 13.1 points per game, was also lost to graduation.

The Sooners returned seniors William Davis (8.7 ppg in 1988-89) and Skeeter Henry (7.0 ppg), and welcomed highly coveted junior college transfers Jackie Jones and Smokey McCovery to campus. But it seemed unlikely to everyone that OU would be able to approach the 32.5 wins and the 19.0 100-point games averaged by the previous two teams. Too many unknowns existed.

“We thought we could be good, and we had kind of been on a roll,” said Tubbs, who is OU’s all-time wins leader with 333. “We still had guys who could run the floor and who could press. But the question going into the season was how were we going to replace the points Stacey King was getting on the inside, because we weren't very big. We were an undersized team, to say the least."

By Nov. 30, Tubbs had much less to worry about. And as it turned out, the 1989-90 Sooners would go down as one of the most prolific teams in school history.

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THE FIRST HALF

The U.S. International Gulls were no stranger to high-scoring games, and actually preferred the up-and-down-the-court action. In fact, during the 1988-89 season, USIU and Loyola Marymount teamed up to score a staggering 341 points in one contest.

The fact that both OU and U.S. International preferred to play fast, and that the Sooners possessed a decided talent advantage, should have indicated the Lloyd Noble Center scoreboard might be in for a major workout.

“We did know that this was a team that would run with us,” said Tubbs this week of U.S. International. “I knew the coach pretty well and he told me when we scheduled the game, 'We're not going to come in there and hold the ball. We'll run with you.' So they were a team that wasn't going to try to hold the score down. They didn't care. They just wanted to play and they wanted to play fast with us.”

"On top of knowing they were going to come in and play up-tempo with us, we knew that they couldn't handle the ball real well."
Former OU Guard Terry Evans

Added OU guard Terry Evans, who redshirted the year before and played his first career game against the Gulls, “On top of knowing they were going to come in and play up-tempo with us, we knew that they couldn't handle the ball real well.”

Evans and the Sooners were correct on both counts. OU jumped out to a 44-10 lead with 11:16 remaining, thanks largely to a 24-0 run over a span of 2:34 that included 18 points off turnovers. During the stretch, USIU committed nine turnovers and managed only one field goal attempt. Seven straight times they failed to get the ball past half court thanks to OU’s swarming press defense.

"They insisted on playing fast despite the fact they kept turning it over. They played right into our hands,” said Evans.

The Sooners reached 50 points with 9:50 remaining in the first half, a pace that seemed impossible to maintain.

Except that they did.

OU pressed its way into 28 first-half takeaways and converted most of them into points. When Davis hit a shot with 1:03 left to give OU a 97-39 lead, it appeared Tubbs’ crew would become the first team in NCAA history to score 100 points in a half.

With 44 seconds left, junior guard Terrence Mullins hoisted a 3-point attempt that would have landed the Sooners on 100. The shot missed. Henry launched another 3 with 26 seconds to go. It was also off the mark. McCovery tried another with 10 seconds left. After the Gulls rebounded that miss and immediately turned it over, Mullins shot another 3 just before the buzzer that would have blown the roof off the LNC had it gone in.

"Maybe our guys thought that if we made two 2's and got 101 that we'd bust and start back at 1 in the second half. In their minds they thought, '97 plus 3 equals 100.' So we shot four 3's in the last minute. They weren’t stopping us inside and we should have gone in there."
Tubbs on the final minute of the first half

It didn’t. The Sooners had to “settle” for an NCAA-record 97 points in the opening 20 minutes.

"I don't know if it was a secret goal or a known goal, but Billy always kind of wanted to score 100 in a half or 200 in a game,” said OU guard Brent Price, who was on the team that season but had to sit out after transferring from South Carolina. “We missed those 3's down the stretch and he was letting the guys have it a little bit at halftime. He wasn't very happy."

Talking to him now, Tubbs foots the blame.

"I remember it was poor coaching,” he said, smiling. “Once we hit 97 I should have called timeout to tell the team that 101 is OK. The mistake we made is that we opted to shoot 3's. Maybe our guys thought that if we made two 2's and got 101 that we'd bust and start back at 1 in the second half. In their minds they thought, '97 plus 3 equals 100.' So we shot four 3's in the last minute. They weren’t stopping us inside and we should have gone in there. It really sounds funny to say you're disappointed you only scored 97 in a half.

"The interesting thing is that if you scored 97 points in the second half, probably nobody would know,” Tubbs continued. “But when it's in the first half and it's right up there on the board, everybody knows. Everybody was going crazy. It was like the end of a really big game. I wish we could have done it because the crowd would have gone completely nuts."

THE RECORDS AND STATS

OUwent on to score “a mere” 76 second-half points in the 173-101 victory. Interestingly, the Sooners did it on sub-50-percent field goal shooting. Their 47.6 percent figure was buoyed by an 86-52 rebounding margin and a 42-12 turnover discrepancy.

Six OU players scored in double figures. Davis score a team-high 31 points in 21 minutes of play and was followed by Henry’s 27 points, Tony Martin’s 24, Jones’ 20, McCovery’s 18 and Evan’s 15. Mike Harris and Kermit Holmes scored nine points each.

A school-record four players recorded double-doubles. Davis pulled down 18 rebounds, Jones 15, Martin 12 and Henry 10. McCovery almost got another with eight steals.

"It was a terrible game for us. Devastating. It was worse than a nightmare. That was an awesome display by Oklahoma."
USIU Head Coach Gary Zarecky

In all, the Sooners set NCAA records that night for most points in a half (97) and most field goals attempted in a half (90) and a game (147). They also tied or established seven Big Eight records.

U.S. International head coach Gary Zarecky was gracious in defeat.

"That wasn't us tonight," said Zarecky. "But that was definitely Oklahoma. What we've built in the past four years we lost tonight. It was a terrible game for us. Devastating. It was worse than a nightmare. That was an awesome display by Oklahoma."

USIU players were also understanding of OU’s relentless pressure, even after the game was well in hand.

"It was obvious they were going for 100, but we would have done it if we were in that situation," said USIU's Steve Smith, who scored a team-high 28 points. "If you see a record, you should try to get it."

THE REST OF THE SEASON

The 173-point game against U.S. International was just one of many highlights that season. In the second and third games of the year, the Sooners scored 146 points against Northeastern Illinois and 130 against Angelo State. In the fourth game, 12th-ranked OU knocked off fifth-ranked UNLV 89-81 before promptly scoring 136 more against Loyola Marymount, 142 against James Madison and 147 versus North Texas the next three outings.

Two of the most memorable games of the season came in the span of three days, when the Sooners knocked off a pair of No. 1 teams at Lloyd Noble Center. Top-ranked Missouri came to Norman for a Sunday afternoon contest and left with a 107-90 beating in front of a national ABC audience. Two nights later in OU’s home finale, Kansas, the nation’s new No. 1, lost 100-78 as ESPN was on hand. After the Sooners posted a 107-94 road win over Oklahoma State the next game, they took over the nation’s top spot in the rankings.

"One of the things I enjoyed most about that season is that we started out No. 18 in the nation and we were making that steady climb up to the top,” reflected Tubbs. “And I'm not sure anyone has ever played the No. 1 team in the nation back to back and beat 'em both. And we laid 100 on each one of them."

"One of the things I enjoyed most about that season is that we started out No. 18 in the nation and we were making that steady climb up to the top. And I'm not sure anyone has ever played the No. 1 team in the nation back to back and beat 'em both. And we laid 100 on each one of them."
Tubbs

From there, Tubbs and Co. beat Nebraska, Kansas and Colorado in the Big Eight Tournament in Kansas City to claim the league’s postseason title and earn a No. 1 NCAA Tournament seed for the third straight year. OU dispatched Towson State 77-68 in the first round in Austin, Texas, but was dealt a dud of a hand in the round of 32 when it had to face North Carolina. The eighth-seeded Tar Heels entered the game with a 20-12 record — subpar by their standards — but were looking to advance to their 10th straight Sweet 16. Hardly the type of opponent a No. 1 seed expects to encounter in the second round.

With OU leading 77-76 with eight seconds left, North Carolina’s King Rice made the first of two free throw attempts to tie the game before missing the second. After a battle for the rebound, the ball caromed out of bounds off of the Sooners. Then UNC’s Rick Fox banked in a short jumper right before the buzzer for the 79-77 win.

It marked a sudden, and somewhat shocking, early end to an otherwise incredible season.

After the game, North Carolina head coach Dean Smith said, “We feel very fortunate to win. We played our best game of the year.”

To this day, Tubbs shakes his head at OU’s misfortune of facing a program as stout as UNC’s in the second round.

"Going into the tournament, if you're the 1 seed and you're going to play North Carolina you'd think it would be in regional final,” said Tubbs recently. “You don't think you're going to get them in the second game. They had had a pretty bad year but they had a pretty good team. We knew that was going to be a tough game because they were big and they were good.

“I thought we could beat them, I thought we would beat them and I thought we should have beaten them. But we didn't.

Added Tubbs, "Let's just say that we didn't get the benefit of very many calls late in that game."

Let's just say the Sooners didn't need the benefit of many calls four months earlier — the night the Lloyd Noble Center scoreboard almost broke.

ABOUT U.S. INTERNATIONAL

The U.S. International Gulls were a Division I men's basketball program that was discontinued following the 1990-91 campaign after the school declared bankruptcy on Dec. 20 of that season. In 2001, USIU combined with the California School of Professional Psychology (CSPP) to form Alliant International University.

Kevin Bradshaw is the best known U.S. International men's basketball player. On Jan. 5, 1991, Bradshaw set the still-standing NCAA record for most points in a game against a Division I opponent. He scored 72 points in a 186-150 loss to Loyola Marymount, breaking the record of 69 points scored by LSU's Pete Maravich against Alabama in 1970. Bradshaw, who ranks 16th in NCAA history with 2,804 career points, scored 26 against the Sooners on Nov. 29, 1989.