Norman, Okla. ? Even though he was knocked out, Oklahoma’s Jabahri Brown might have delivered the knockout blows to Kansas.
“Brown gave us a great start,” OU coach Kelvin Sampson said after the Sooners hung on for a 77-70 victory Sunday at Lloyd Noble Center. “We fed off of him.”
Brown, a 6-foot-10 junior from the Virgin Islands, blocked two KU layup attempts in the early going and contributed a couple of stick-back baskets before he was felled with 10:15 showing in the first half.
Brown’s jaw had come into inadvertent contact with Jayhawk Michael Lee’s noggin, and Brown was knocked cold. OU officials determined Brown had suffered a concussion, and he did not return. After the game, Sampson said he thought Brown “was going to be OK.”
At the time, OU led 17-8, but Brown had set the tone, and the Sooners raced on to a 47-26 halftime lead that grew to 32 points six minutes into the second half.
Although Brown had been the catalyst, Sampson didn’t really miss him until Kansas staged its furious comeback.
“We knew Kansas would come back,” Sampson said. “Their program is too good, their kids are too tough, and depth was a serious, serious issue with us.”
Johnnie Gilbert, Brown’s back-up, ran into foul trouble, and Sampson was forced to go to Plan C — Joszef Szendrei, a 6-9 senior, who apparently is held together with spit and bailing wire.
“How about Joszef Szendrei?” Sampson said. “He’s out there battling and playing hard. He’s all taped up, and he has shin splints out the ying-yang, and he gets 11 rebounds playing 23 minutes when I’d normally play him about six.”
Still, it was the backcourt duo of Hollis Price and Quannas White who inflicted the most damage. Each finished with 19 points. White was particularly deadly in drilling all four of his three-point attempts.
“I just felt good today shooting,” said White, a 6-1 senior. “I had confidence, and my shot was falling.”
Price, also a 6-1 senior and a high school teammate of White when they were growing up in New Orleans, didn’t have his best overall game, with only one assist and four turnovers. Also, Price, a 90-plus percent free-throw shooter, missed two free throws in the late going.
Nevertheless, Price is OU’s floor leader, and his teammates know it.
“I got on our guys,” Price said about the second-half loss of momentum. “We were playing conservative. We were just playing to win.”
Like Sampson, Price was hardly surprised by the Jayhawks’ comeback.
“We knew they’d make a run, and they did,” he said. “They got up on us by 20 last year (in Lawrence), and we did the same thing to them.”
Actually, Kansas led by 22 in that game, which the Jayhawks eventually won, just as the Sooners did Sunday.
“Every league has a flagship school,” Sampson said. “(Kansas) is our flagship school, and if you want to win the league championship, you have to beat Kansas.”
Oklahoma extended its nation-best homecourt win streak to 36. The last team to defeat OU in Lloyd Noble Center was Kansas in 2001.
Clearly, the Sooners are peaking at the right time.
“Our kids were ready to play,” Sampson said. “We’re kind of ascending, which is good this time of year.”
Asked to pinpoint the reasons for the Sooners’ rise, Sampson was vague.
“It’s hard to put a finger on it,” he said. “We’re just getting better.”
