CLUTCH TIME
Woodard lifting Sooners with strong second-half play
NORMAN — With the game tied and less than 10 seconds left in Wednesday’s game at West Virginia, there was little doubt about who was going to get the basketball for Oklahoma.
Even though virtually everyone at WVU Coliseum knew where the ball was going, there was little that one of the toughest defenses in the country could do to stop it.
Sooners’ senior Jordan Woodard caught the inbounds pass and streaked up court directly toward the basket, laying it in with about two seconds left to give OU an upset over the No. 7-ranked team in the country.
OU enters Saturday’s home game against Iowa State (1 p.m., ESPN2) surging after scuffling through much of December and January.
Since returning from a four-game absence, Woodard has quickly elevated the Sooners to a level better than they were before he was initially knocked out with a leg injury for the Dec. 21 game against Auburn.
He missed the first three Big 12 games due to a non-basketball related medical issue.
A big reason for Oklahoma’s strong play since Woodard’s return — the Sooners are 2-1 with the only loss coming to No. 2 Kansas in a game OU led by nine at halftime — has been his second-half play.
In the three games he’s been back, Woodard has scored 11 first-half points on 2-of-14 shooting in games against the Jayhawks, Texas Tech and West Virginia.
After halftime, though, Woodard has been a different player, scoring 43 points on 14-of-24 shooting.
“He’s made big plays,” Sooners coach Lon Kruger said. “He’s made critical plays at key times in ballgames. Late in the game (Wednesday), he took over and made scoring play after scoring play. That raises the confidence and security level of everyone else when you have an older guy that’s able to step out there and give you big buckets at key times.”
Woodard certainly did that. It hasn’t just been the Sooners forcing things to Woodard when games get tight that’s helped his second-half surge.
With a little more than six minutes left and OU trying to climb back into the game, Woodard stepped into a passing lane near the top of the key and went to the other end for a layup.
In the final minute, when a misguided Mountaineers’ pass wound up in the hands of Kristian Doolittle under the basket, Woodard took off the other way and Doolittle immediately flinged the ball to his fellow former Edmond Memorial standout. Woodard caught up with the pass and scored after West Virginia was called for basket interference.
He’s also scored plenty inside the framework of the offense, most notably in the last few seconds of regulation and overtime as Woodard first kept the game alive with a floater near the rim to end regulation and then ended it with the layup in overtime.
Woodard said there’s no big revelation to his recent second-half success.
“It’s just progression,” Woodard said. “Just trying to be more resilient this year than in years past. Coach Kruger and Coach Crutch (assistant Chris Crutchfield), they do a good job of telling me what I need to do during halftime and I just stick to the things that Coach (Carlin) Hartman) says we might work on and it just pays off.”