The Oklahoma Sooners gave up two game-winners to Oweh.
They say beating a team twice in the same season in college sports is a difficult thing to do. How about not only doing so twice, but in the same way and by virtually the same score, and with the same player delivering the final dagger?
What do they call that…Deja vu all over again? At the very least, definitely incredibly bad luck.
On Feb. 26, in a relatively close game right to the end, Oklahoma took an 82-81 lead over Kentucky on a pair of free throws with 20 seconds to go in the game. Just when it looked like the Sooners might pull out a huge Quad 1 win over the country’s 17th-ranked team, Otega Oweh, who played the last two seasons at Oklahoma, drove to the basket and put up an off-balance, two-point shot that dropped through the net with six seconds remaining to put Kentucky back in front, 83-82.
The Sooners still had time left to get the ball down the court and get off what would have been a game-winning shot, but Jeremiah Fears’ layup attempt at the other end was blocked by, guess who? The former Sooner Oweh, who ended up scoring a career-best 28 points in leading Kentucky to the regular-season win over Oklahoma.
Two weeks later, these same two teams met this past week in the second round of the SEC Men’s Basketball Tournament. Kentucky led most of the game and held a 10-point advantage with 1:26 to go in the game after Oweh, yet again, made two free throws to make it 80-70.
It appeared at that point that the Wildcats had the game well in control, and the Sooners’ time in their first SEC tournament, not to mention their three-game win streak, was about to come to a disappointing end.
No one bothered to tell the Sooners that the game was over, however, as OU dialed up some Sooner Magic, scoring 14 of the next 17 points and remarkably taking an 84-83 lead with just six seconds left to play in the game.
If this is beginning to sound eerily familiar to you, it should. It is exactly the time and scene that took place two weeks before.
Only this time, it was Oklahoma with the one-point lead, and Kentucky with the ball and needing a basket to win the game with just six ticks left on the game clock. If you’re a Sooner fan — or any person in attendance at Bridgestone Arena in Nashville early last Friday morning — it didn’t take much imagination to know who was going to have the ball in his hands for the final shot.
Unlike OU’s Fears in the game in Norman in late February, Kentucky made good in its attempt to steal victory from the jaws of defeat. And the player who wielded the final knockout punch was none other Oweh himself on a driving layup as time expired.
Porter Moser was asked in the postgame press conference after the SEC tournament loss his impression of Kentucky and specifically of Oweh.
“I coached Otega, so I know my impression of him,” the OU head coach said. “He’s very, very good.”
Ring up another Kentucky win over Oklahoma in the final seconds by just a single point… and the biggest insult of all, it came at the hand of a former Sooner player who gave up his crimson and cream jersey after last season for one of Kentucky blue.