OU guard Xzayvier Brown bounced back... just like Sooners

After all the ups and downs of OU basketball this season, you could have thought last Saturday at Texas was the final nail in the coffin.

OU fouled a 3-point shooter not once but twice in the final minute. The final time? When Xzayvier Brown, who has been incredible for the Sooners, just lost track of space.

Brown thought Texas guard Jordan Pope was taking a 2-pointer with the Horns down three. It was a legit 3-point attempt, and Pope drained all three to send the game into overtime.

Not again. We’ve seen this story before.

Except, of course, OU flipped that script. The Sooners prevailed in overtime, 88-85, with Brown coming up huge on an assist to Derrion Reid on the back-breaking 3-pointer with 11 seconds left.

That’s resilience, and that’s the story of this year’s Sooners.

“Everything was just super confident, alright,” head coach Porter Moser said. “It’s not, ‘Here we go again.’ It’s this is a new thing, a new five minutes, and I thought that mentality—and then when we were shooting the free throws at the very end with two seconds (left), X walks over to me, and I thought he was going to ask me about shadowing or something. He goes, ‘Coach, I’m so sorry for that play.’ I’m like, ‘Man, don’t be.’ That’s just the kind of guy he is. But that’s the confidence we have.”

No. 14 South Carolina vs. No. 11 OU
When: 8:30 p.m. Wednesday
Where: Nashville, SEC Tournament
TV: SEC Network

This week/weekend is one of the reasons Brown picked OU. It’s time for the SEC Tournament. And as good as OU is playing with winning its last four and six of its last eight, everything rides on a few days in Nashville.

Or at least, hopefully, a few days. This cannot be a one-and-done type of situation.

Brown had four assists and zero turnovers in that win in Austin. Nothing has really fazed him, and the Sooners will no doubt need his best against the Gamecocks.

“Just that his game, too, that it didn’t let it bother him,” Moser said. “That assist was — we do shooting drills called paint touch 3s where we’re drawing and kicking, collapsing the defense. And X made a heckuva find. Drew everybody in and kicked it to the corner.

“For him, he wants to win so bad. During this whole losing streak, every day he is one of the loudest voices in practice. He wants to win so bad. But he didn’t let it affect him. That’s huge. It says a lot about him. I love that he’s on my side and I just think — and he’s getting better and better. His game, especially defense, his defense has escalated. He’s playing better and better defensively.”

Round 2 vs. SC

Moser termed these latest games as retribution ones. OU lost to Missouri and Texas and got those wins back last week.

Now? The Sooners will have to do that one game after another, starting with a second battle against South Carolina.

The first one was arguably the worst performance of the season by OU. It put the losing streak to five that would eventually extend to nine.

OU is a whole heck of a lot different this time around. But Moser said, yea, so is South Carolina. Gotta bring your best for the 40 minutes (or more) coming up.

“They were super aggressive against Ole Miss,” Moser said. “They really were driving the ball. Meechie Johnson, I mean, he’s an all-league player; I know he didn’t make the all-league team, but he’s an all-league player. Everybody in the league says that about him. But I think their supporting cast is playing really, really well. Elijah Strong started the game 11-0 on us, and that really put us in a hole. He’s a guy that can post up, and he can pop and shoot threes—as he’s shown hitting three threes in the first minutes of our game.

“Knox is playing really aggressive. He had 18 in our first game. They’re very aggressive off the dribble. They’re super sound defensively, really sound defensively. I know they’ve had, just like us, they had a streak but they were competing in so many of the games.”

Johnson hit a 3-pointer in the final seconds to give South Carolina a victory at Ole Miss on Saturday and propel the Gamecocks to the No. 14 seed.