THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
THURSDAY, JANUARY 23, 2014
PAGE 7B
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NCAA
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Oklahoma guard Buddy Hield (24) shoots in front of TCU forward Amric Fields during the first half of an NCAA college basketball game in Norman, Okla., Wednesday night.
Spangler helps No.25 Oklahoma hold off TCU
ASSOCIATED PRESS
NORMAN, Okla. Ryan Spangler scored all 13 of his points in the second half and grabbed a career-high 16 rebounds to help No.25 Oklahoma hold off Texas Christian 77-69 on Wednesday night.
Buddy Hield had 16 points and Cameron Clark added 15 for the Sooners (15-4, 4-2 Big 12), who moved into a tie for second place in the Big 12 despite struggling against the last-place team in the league.
The Sooners struggled to score for much of the night but made up for it by playing one of their best defensive games. Oklahoma held TCU to 43
percent shooting and forced 16 turnovers.
Kyan Anderson scored 23 points and Amric Fields added 15 for TCU (9-9, 0-6), which lost its previous four conference games by an average of 22 points. Karviar Shepherd added 12 points and 11 rebounds for the Horned Frogs.
Texas Christian trailed 43-42 in the opening minutes of the second half before Isaiah Cousins made a jumper, then a steal by Clark led to a dunk by Hield to give Oklahoma a 47-42 lead and caused TCU to call a timeout.
TCU scored the next five points to tie the score at 47 with about 13 minutes to play.
Spangler made his first basket of the game, was fouled and made the free throw to give Oklahoma the lead again. A 3-pointer by Clark pushed Oklahoma's advantage to 57-49 with just under 11 minutes remaining. A steal and layup by Clark bumped the Sooners' lead to 10.
Fields made a 3-pointer, then Oklahoma turned the ball over and Anderson hit a 3 to trim OU's lead to 59-55. Fields tied the score at 66 on a layup with 3:46 remaining, but Oklahoma held the Horned Frogs without a field goal the rest of the way. Spangler hit a 3-pointer with 33 seconds remaining, just his third of the season, to give the Sooners a 77-67 lead.
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Early and No. 5 Wichita St beat Illinois St, 70-55
Wichita State (20-0, 7-0 Missouri Valley Conference) is one of three remaining unbeaten in the country, along with No.1 Arizona and No.2 Syracuse.
NCAA
ASSOCIATED PRESS
After a dominant second half by No. 5 Wichita State at Redbird Arena on Wednesday night, Illinois State was just thinking about how it couldn't stop Cleanthony Early.
NORMAL, Ill. — Illinois State was thinking about a big upset for a while.
Early, Wichita's 6-foot-8 senior All-America candidate, scored 23 points and added 10 rebounds as the Shockers wiped out a three-point halftime deficit and rolled Illinois State 70-55.
Illinois State (11-8, 4-3) had won 10 of 13 coming, and is now tied for third in the Valley.
"To beat a team like that, you have to play 40 solid minutes, and we didn't," Illinois State coach Dan Muller said. "We didn't get any loose balls and rebounds in the second half, like we had in the first."
Wichita State becomes the second MVC team to open a season 20-0, joining Larry Bird's Indiana State squad of 1978-79 that reached 33-0 before losing the national championship game to Michigan State.
"I think it's a pretty big accomplishment," WSU's Ryan Baker said, "considering the other team to do it was Indiana State — and who was on that team. I'm assuming it was Larry Bird, right?"
Illinois State led throughout most of the first half. The Redbirds took a 28-25 lead into intermission on Bobby Hunter's buzzer-beating layup off a full-court set play.
Marshall was asked if he knew his team would come out more aggressive in the second half.
"I hoped," he said. "We haven't had consecutive bad halves all year, knock on wood.
"The biggest thing was, we
DAN MULLER
Illinois State coach
"To beat a team like that, you have to play 40 solid minutes, and we didn't."
didn't turn it over against their extended 2-3 zone. In the first half, we didn't score against it. In the second half, we made some plays going to the basket."
None better than the last of Tekele Cotton's 12 points, a thunderous, baseline dunk with 2:55 left that had his teammates searching for superlatives.
"It was indescribable," said Baker, who scored 15 despite 3-of-12 shooting. "I thought they were just going to end the game right there."
"That," Marshall said, "was quite a play by a tremendous, tremendous athlete. It seemed like he never stopped rising. That was just a throw, a throwdown into the rim."
ISU was led by Daishon
Knight, who scored eight of his 12 at the line. The Redbirds starters combined for just 11 field goals.
ISU shot 32.2 percent overall (19 of 59).
"I felt we were getting solid shots, with a few forced ones," Muller said.
The Shockers made 11 of 27 from 3-point range compared to just 1 of 25 for Illinois State.
"He's the one who shot well," WSU coach Gregg Marshall said of Early. "The others just shot OK. Six for nine for him is tremendous."
"We had four or five turnovers in the first four-minute segment," Marshall said, "and 11 in the first half, which is more than we average for a game. If we played the second half like we had the first, we wouldn't have won the game."
Marshall said he recently moved the 6-foot-8 Early to the wing more on offense, with the shorter Baker operating in the lane against ISU's 2-3 zone.
The defense, gave Wichita trouble early.
"We started playing our brand of basketball," said sophomore point guard Fred Van Vleet, whose six assists and one turnover will keep him second in the NCAA in assist-to-turnover ratio. "In the first half, we sometimes over-pass."
They did nothing of the kind. Wichita State had two second-half turnovers and scored 45 points.
The Shockers beat ISU 66-47 two weeks earlier at Wichita.
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