NCAA BASKETBALL TOURNAMENT : Oklahoma Fouls Up Villanova Game Plan With Foul Shooting

It was generally assumed that if Villanova could force Oklahoma to play at a slower tempo, which is uncharacteristic of the Sooners, then the Big East Conference team would win.

The pace was to Villanova’s liking for the better part of the National Collegiate Athletic Assn. Southeast Regional final Saturday at Birmingham-Jefferson Coliseum.

Nevertheless, Oklahoma still prevailed, winning, 78-59, to advance to the Final Four at Kansas City, Mo., where the Sooners will face the winner of today’s West Regional, either Arizona or North Carolina, next Saturday.

The final score was not indicative of the close, tense nature of the game.

Villanova (24-13) was still within upset range of Oklahoma (34-3), trailing by only 57-54 with 4:49 left and guard Gary Massey at the free-throw line for a one-and-one opportunity.

Massey missed his first attempt, and Oklahoma center Stacey King scored a few seconds later on a breakaway slam.

Then, Oklahoma imitated Villanova, which had surprisingly advanced this far mainly on its accurate free-throw shooting. The Sooners made 10 straight foul shots to close out the Wildcats.

“I think this game showed that that we can win at any tempo and we even hit free throws down the stretch,” Oklahoma Coach Billy Tubbs said. “That (free-throw shooting) isn’t one of our greatest assets. If they weren’t important, we probably wouldn’t have hit them.”

Villanova Coach Rollie Massimino knew that his team wasn’t capable of running the floor with the more physically gifted Sooners.

So his game was plan was sound, as acknowledged by Tubbs. Villanova resorted to a four corners, delayed-type offense, and the strategy worked.

In the final eight minutes of the first half, Villanova outscored Oklahoma, 13-3, to lead, surprisingly, 38-31, at halftime.

During that stretch, Oklahoma, rushing its shots and committing three turnovers, was only 1 of 8 from the field.

Fred Schaus, the former Laker coach who is now West Virginia’s athletic director, noted that Oklahoma was out of sync at that juncture and impatient at being forced to remain on defense while Villanova ran time off the 45-second shot clock.

Villanova was still in control with 13:56 remaining to play, leading, 48-40. Then the Wildcats seemed to tire as King, who had a game-high 28 points, began penetrating inside and the Sooners went on an 11-0 run.

The Wildcats never regained the lead and the free throws, four by guard Ricky Grace, finished them off. It was a nice run for an underdog team, but Villanova couldn’t come out of nowhere to win the NCAA championship as it did in 1985.

“That was as hard a fought game as we’ve had all year,” Tubbs said. “I didn’t think that we could be tricked, but they tricked us. When they came out with their four corners offense at the outset of the game, we lost our poise and composure.

“Seven down at halftime in that kind of a game is like being 20 down in our type of a game. But I really appreciate our team’s courage and not losing its composure in the second half and making things happen for us.”

Oklahoma, with its baseline-to- baseline pressing defense and hurry up offense, came into the game averaging 104.7 points. Only Loyola Marymount, with an average of 110 points game, scores more frequently than the Sooners. Two of Oklahoma’s three losses came in games in which it scored fewer than 80 points.

When questioned again on Villanova’s tempo, Tubbs said: “We need to look at a 15-second shot clock. Isn’t that (slow-paced games) boring? We would only have 1,000 people watching a game like that. Now I shouldn’t have said that.”

Tubbs likes to put on the media with his country bumpkin routine. When asked if he intended to trick Villanova, he said, “We don’t trick anybody.”

However, Oklahoma, not recognized as a patient team, was patient in the second half as Villanova seemed to tire.

The Wildcats shot 57.1% in the first half but only 30.8% in the second half. Oklahoma shot 45.2% in the game.

Moreover, Villanova committed 11 of its 19 turnovers in the second half. Oklahoma has harassed opponents into committing an average of 24 turnovers a game this season.

Massimino couldn’t fault the way his team played.

“They wore us down a little bit in the second half,” he said. “We missed some shots, then we missed that one-and-one (Massey) and didn’t get a key rebound. Still, we were right there.

“I thought our guys did a fabulous job. They brought the ball up court against pressure, established tempo and executed what had to be executed.”

That they did and with an eight-point lead early in the second half, Villanova was in sight of an upset.

Mark Plansky, Villanova’s senior forward and the only holdover from the 1985 championship team, was asked what went wrong at that juncture.

“We didn’t change much, but they were like a time bomb ready to erupt,” he said. “If we played two halves like we played the first half, it would have been one of the greatest upsets of all time and would make Coach Mass one of the greatest strategists.”

Plansky, normally an accurate outside shooter, had only six points. He was 3 of 11 from the field while missing on four three-point shots.

Kenny Wilson, Villanova’s 5-foot 9-inch guard, was a factor in the first half with his ballhandling and scoring (13 points). But he scored only two points the second half as Grace relieved Mookie Blaylock of the assignment of covering Wilson.

“He had been penetrating a little bit, so I stayed in front of him,” Grace said. “I didn’t go for a steal. I wanted him to shoot the jumper, which isn’t his strongest point.”

King, a 6-10 center who runs the court like a small forward, said that Oklahoma’s condition played a factor in the second half. This is a team that features full-court, game-like scrimmages in practices replete with officials.

“I’m used to running up and down the court and, when they spread it out to the corners, that was new to us. We hadn’t seen anybody do that except in late-game situations.

“I think we wore them down in the second half. We played tough, man-to-man denial defense, and I think that took them out of their game plan, and they didn’t know whether to penetrate, dish it off, or shoot the 3’s.”

So Billy Tubbs’ team is going to the Final Four. And it will be joined by another Big Eight Conference team, either Kansas, or Kansas State, the finalists in the Midwest Regional.

“The Big Eight is a helluva conference,” Tubbs said. “You all didn’t know that, but we did.”