Pain Lingers in Stillwater

Oklahoma State’s Eddie Sutton sounded like a typical coach after the No. 11 Cowboys defeated visiting Colorado, 64-55, on Saturday at Stillwater.

“I think the game today was very, very important that we win it,” Sutton said. “I’m not sure that in the first half that some of our guys weren’t a little tight, because they realized the importance of winning this ballgame.”

The circumstances were anything but typical for his team, which is dealing with a somber anniversary.

A year ago today, 10 people, including two players and six members of the program’s traveling party, were killed in a plane crash during a return trip from Colorado.

They were honored with a moment of silence at halftime Saturday.

Sutton said he didn’t mention the anniversary before the game, but some of the players did.

“They were very much aware of it,” he said. “With all the media coverage we’ve had this week and all the articles that have been written, there’s no way that you’re not aware of [today] being the one-year anniversary.”

Since the crash, the school has reevaluated its athletic travel policies.

Last week, school officials announced the team would use a 32-seat charter jet the rest of the season and no longer would rely on twin-engine prop planes like the one that crashed.

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Revenge factor: Before tipoff, Maryland Coach Gary Williams wrote something on the board in the locker room: REVENGE.

Williams and his players remember the last time they lost at home, 74-71, to Florida State last February.

They remember that after that game the last-place Seminoles pumped their fists, and Florida State guard Delvon Arrington jumped onto the scorer’s table as the Terrapins left the court to boos from the home crowd.

Maryland guard Juan Dixon spent several hours alone in the team weight room that day, pondering the ramifications of the dreadful loss.

“It’s something that happened. I didn’t like it,” Williams said of the hostile Cole Field House crowd a year earlier. “It really helped us, the booing at the end of the game. The players heard it too. We realized if we were going to turn it around it would have to be us.”

Dixon’s 25-point, 11-rebound, eight-steal performance Saturday was the main reason for Maryland’s 84-63 victory this time.

“It was really important, considering what happened here last year,” center Lonny Baxter said. “It was still in the back of our minds today, to come out and take care of business. We don’t want to send a message, we just wanted to win.”

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Playing percentages: Like a football coach who lost the coin toss, Arkansas Coach Nolan Richardson went with his defense first and kept his offense on the bench.

Jannero Pargo sat while Charles Tatum and his teammates set a frantic pace with three steals in the first 89 seconds. Pargo entered the game after four minutes and scored a career-high 35 points, including a three-point basket for the final points of overtime and a 14-foot jumper with 2.7 seconds left in overtime, as Arkansas beat No. 5 Florida, 94-92, at Fayetteville.

“I didn’t start him because I wanted to get defense started early and let him score off the bench, and he did,” Richardson said of Pargo, who had 30 points through regulation.

After trying to use three inside players against Georgia on Wednesday, Richardson went back to his three-guard lineup and pressured from one baseline to the other. Florida committed a season-high 25 turnovers and the Razorbacks scored 28 points off those mistakes.

“I like to say we need to be like a bunch of dogs with rabies; you don’t want to get too close to us,” Richardson said. “That is the way we have to play to win.”

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Hot Hoosiers: Dane Fife couldn’t keep himself from laughing near the end of Indiana’s game against No. 9 Illinois.

He never had seen the Hoosiers shoot so well from the outside in such a big game, and he had never anticipated such a lopsided victory over the Illini.

Fife scored 20 points, and the Hoosiers set a school record with 17 three-pointers in an 88-57 victory over the Illini, their worst loss in more than a decade.

“Basically, every time we shot, we were like ‘Let’s go and get on back on defense because we know it’s going in,’” Fife said. “I was literally laughing at the end of the game. It was a strange feeling, but it was an amazing feeling.”

The Hoosiers made 63% of their three-pointers, with Fife getting six, Kyle Hornsby five and Tom Coverdale four.

“We haven’t been able to do that in the past and that’s a credit to our coaches,” Fife said. “They make us shoot the ball. They believe in us, probably more than we do.”

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Three for the show: Stanford’s Casey Jacobsen made two three-pointers Saturday against USC, giving him 196 in his career. He has combined with brothers Adam, who went to Pacific, and Brock, who went to San Diego, for 599 three-pointers--most by a family in NCAA history.

The Jacobsen brothers began the game tied with Brendan and Kevin McCarthy, who combined to make 597 three-pointers while playing at St. Anselm College and New Hampshire College, respectively.

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Performance of the day: Morehead State’s Ricky Minard caught his own deflected pass and made a running eight-footer with two seconds left to lead the Eagles to an 89-88 victory against Tennessee Martin. Minard finished with 38 points two days after scoring 37 in a victory against Murray State.

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Performance of the weak: Leading 51-46 with 5:16 to play, Duquesne went scoreless the rest of the way and lost its seventh in a row in a 55-51 defeat to Richmond.

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Compiled by Jim Barrero