Jalon Moore caught Jeremiah Fears' pass right in the shooter's pocket.
The Sooners were on the run after forcing a Texas A&M turnover. After a few passes around the horn, the freshman found his senior leader behind the arc.
Swish.
The moneyball capped a 12-3 Sooners run out of the locker room and ballooned the OU lead to 18 points at 51-33 with 17 minutes to go.
💥💥💥@jalonmoore3 | 📺 SEC Network pic.twitter.com/EiT3BUi4Gt
— Oklahoma Basketball (@OU_MBBall) January 9, 2025
The party was officially on inside the Lloyd Noble Center. The 7,604 Sooner fans who braved the cold temperatures to witness the SEC home opener in person were in a frenzy as the Sooners appeared to be on their way to their first conference win after a disappointing 107-79 loss at the hands of the Alabama Crimson Tide a mere four days ago.
Final score: Texas A&M 80, OU 78.
Rather than leaving with jubilation, Sooner fans left with the gut punch of a collapse that left everyone in the arena — with the exception of the Aggie players, coaches and fans — stunned.
After holding Texas A&M to only 33 points in the first 23 minutes of the game, the Aggies blitzed the Sooners for 47 points over the last 17 minutes and stormed all the way back to steal game number two in conference play away from OU. After starting the season a perfect 13-0, the Sooners have dropped their last two games and still search for their first conference win as a member of the SEC.
What happened? The crimson train was rolling. The Sooners had the Aggies locked up and as it appeared, overmatched. OU looked every bit the part of the team that went undefeated in the non-conference and garnered a top-12 national ranking. How did the wheels fall off the tracks?
“Turnovers. Plain and simple,” head coach Porter Moser said after the heartbreaking loss.
There’s no other way to put it. OU gave the ball away a whopping 18 times against the Aggies. Turnovers have not plagued the Sooners all season. However, on Wednesday night, OU caught a bad case of the turnover bug.
OU committed eight turnovers in the first half, which resulted in six Aggie points. But the real story with the turnovers came in the second half, where the Sooners coughed the ball up 10 times.
Ten turnovers compared to eight might seem like a minor difference. However, those 10 turnovers in the second half led to 24 points for the Aggies and allowed them to mount their comeback victory.
“Whenever we had a chance to keep some momentum going, we gave the ball away,” Moser said. “I felt like we couldn’t really deliver a knockout punch doing that.”
Nine turnovers came during a stretch of 13 game-minutes, from the 16:30 mark to the 3:30 mark. During that span, the Aggies were able to completely flip the game, going from down 15 to taking a four point advantage.
“(Texas A&M is) an elite team defensively,” Moser said. “They got their hands in the passing lanes and were able to come away with a lot of those. They made it challenging for us.”
Fears led the way with four turnovers. Guards Kobe Elvis and Duke Miles, as well as Moore, all had three turnovers. Guard Brycen Goodine and center Mohamed Wague each had two. The giveaways allowed the Aggies to hang around with the Sooners and perpetually chip away at the OU lead until they ultimately found themselves on the high side of the scoreboard.
the hustle + solo slam‼️📺SEC Network#GigEm pic.twitter.com/YprHLnZ0JE
— Texas A&M Basketball (@aggiembk) January 9, 2025
The A&M lead got to as high as five points with 2:49 to go. A quick 6-0 Sooner run punctuated by forward Sam Godwin's layup gave the lead back to OU at 78-77 with 1:05 remaining. After a couple of empty possessions both ways, A&M guard Zhuric Phelps hit a go-ahead three to put the Aggies in front 80-78, and that’s where the score finished.
A night that showed incredible promise through 23 minutes ended in defeat. The Sooners are still looking for their first conference win and a reason to prove their 13-0 start wasn’t a fluke.
“It’s disappointing to have a guy put up the performance that he does and be overshadowed by a loss,” Moser said after the game.
That “guy” Moser is referring to is Goodine, who came off the bench and lit the scoreboard up for 34 points for the Sooners, a new season-high. Goodine was 10 of 14 from the field and nine of 11 from beyond the three point arc. Twenty-one of Goodine’s 34 points came in the first half.
The transfer guard came six points shy of tying his career-high but lapped his fellow Sooners in the box score. Fears was the next leading scorer with 13, followed by Moore with 11. Despite the loss, Goodine put on full display what he can bring to this Sooners squad moving forward, which is lights-out shooting.
“It was nice to see the first few go down for me,” Goodine said after the game. “I just wanted to come in and help my team in any way that I could. I was happy to get it going early.”
Unlike football, basketball schedules don’t allow for teams to sit and stew over a loss for long. In the gauntlet that is the SEC, having short-term memory is even more paramount. The Sooners have to quickly shift their focus to their next opponent, the Georgia Bulldogs, who just knocked off No. 6 Kentucky on Tuesday night.
An unranked team knocking off the number six team in the country is a prime example of how unpredictable college basketball can be. More specifically, an example of the unpredictability of SEC basketball. The grind doesn’t stop in this league, and the Sooners are right in the middle of it.
The Sooners have been handed two gut punches in a row by their new conference opponents. One via a blowout and the other via a collapse that left fans stunned and others thinking, “Oh boy. Here we go again.”
This loss will sting, but it can’t afford to linger. The SEC doesn’t throw pity parties, so the Sooners shouldn’t either. The gauntlet continues in three days.
Oklahoma will look to pick up its first conference win when it takes on the Georgia Bulldogs at 5 p.m. on Saturday in Athens, Georgia.
