Sooners top Utes in Overtime

There will always be a few games in each college basketball season when a coach's frustrations are turned upside down in the blink of an eye. Such was the case for the Oklahoma Sooners and coach Jeff Capel on Saturday afternoon in Salt Lake City.

The Sooners - after giving up a bucket to Utah's Carlon Brown in the final 10 seconds of regulation - were immersed in a heated overtime tussle with the homestanding Utes at the Jon M. Huntsman Center, site of the epic 1979 national championship game between Larry Bird's Indiana State Sycamores and Magic Johnson's Michigan State Spartans. This arena has been the location of many great basketball feats over the decades, and with Oklahoma trailing Utah, 71-69, at the two-minute mark of the extra period, Capel - who played on a Duke team that reached the national championship game in 1994 - knew that his players had to elevate their level of play.

Little did Capel know, however, exactly how his team would escape the Mountain Time zone with a richly satisfying triumph.

Down by two and just two minutes from a possible defeat, Capel and the rest of his assistant coaches looked on with concern as Willie Warren - a prime contender for Big 12 Player of the Year honors - hoisted a long shot far beyond the top of the key. On a relatively stagnant Sooner possession, Warren threw up a bad shot without working the ball and setting his teammates up for a high-percentage look. Capel had to be thinking what so many other coaches think in such moments: "No, no, no! That's not the shot we want! That's not the shot we need!"

Just a moment later, however, that 29-foot heave swished through the next to give OU a 72-71 lead with 1:58 remaining. A Utah team that was clearly shaken by that bomb missed a few threes and coughed up an untimely turnover on its next few possessions. Before very long, the Crimson and Cream from Norman, Okla., were walking to their locker room, a five-point victory safely secured before the giddy plane flight home.

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Capel's "No, no, no!", a cry of a coach's heart in the heat of late-game competition, surely turned into "Good shot!" when the leather ripped through the chords, tickling the twine to the tune of three precious points.

Willie Warren is a prodigious talent and a gifted scorer who will keep Oklahoma afloat this year after the loss of both Blake and Taylor Griffin. Big No. 13 will hit many clutch shots for Capel and the rest of the Sooners before this 2009-10 campaign is through. With that said, few OU observers could have imagined exactly how Warren would claim the day for his teammates on a memorable afternoon near the Great Salt Lake.

Jeff Capel - for all his worries and doubts - can now exhale. A once-concerned coach must simply give thanks and praise the heavens that a low-percentage shot turned into a game-winning thunderbolt for the Oklahoma basketball team.

By Matt Zemek
Big12-fans.com Staff Writer

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