HOUSTON — The Sooners fell to Villanova 95-51 in Saturday’s national semifinal, the most lopsided loss for any team in the 77-year history of the Final Four.
The last time a team got beat this badly on this stage was in 1979, when Penn lost to Magic Johnson's Michigan State squad by 34 points.
“We played a horrible game tonight,” senior guard Buddy Hield said. “Basketball is funny like that, sometimes. When things are going good for you, then it just turns bad like that.”
It’s conceivable that OU’s opponents felt the same way last week in Anaheim. The Sooners set the tone early in their games against Texas A&M and Oregon by responding to every surge in momentum coming from the opposite bench. OU made the other team believe there was not a way it could win.
The Wildcats did the same thing Saturday, growing their lead to 20 points, then to 30 points and then to 40 points. Villanova's eventual 44-point win also marked its largest lead of the game.
“Well, it becomes embarrassing right there,” OU coach Lon Kruger said. “You know, we lost our composure there obviously and things came apart. You never like handling things like that. We'd liked to have handled their run a little bit better."
It was the perfect storm of Villanova's shooting and OU going into a shooting slump at the worst possible time. The Wildcats shot 71 percent from the floor while the Sooners could only muster a 32 percent performance. In the second half, Oklahoma shot just 12.5 percent from beyond the arc.
“Buddy and everyone else, I thought Villanova dictated everything,” Kruger said. “They just dictated on both ends of the floor. They were great. We didn't respond very well to it.
"But, you know, we got whipped in every way.”
Despite what the box score indicates, OU’s deficit was a manageable 14 points at halftime — the Sooners had found their offensive rhythm in crunch time before, so maybe they could do it again. OU even knocked the Wildcats' lead down to nine at one point in the second half.
But this was not a normal night, it was an historic night. It didn’t take long for the Sooners to figure that out the hard way.
“When they just started making everything,” senior guard Isaiah Cousins said when asked about when he felt the game was lost. “I mean, they were just throwing it up there, and everything was falling for them. I just figured that they pretty much had the game.”
Hield acknowledged that Villanova’s remarkable shotmaking deflated the Sooners down the stretch. The Wildcats never took their foot off the gas, which kept any possible magic from OU at bay.
For Hield, it was disappointing that the Sooners didn’t have one more surge left in them to save the season.
“I’m just mad that we didn’t have that fight and effort to come back and make it a game,” Hield said. “What Villanova did was take us out of our gameplan. A team like that makes so many shots can suck the life out of a team because you’re fighting hard to get stops.”
As he ran down the tunnel after the game, Hield appeared to hold back tears as fans gave him a standing ovation. Those fans had reason to celebrate after the moments he gave them.
But even Hield had to admit that Villanova was to good to give him another great moment Saturday.
“We came ready to play, but they were just the better team today,” Hield said.
