Bedlam can get even better
STILLWATER — Brad Underwood plopped into a chair for his postgame news conference Saturday night. Just a little earlier, the OSU coach had belly-flopped onto the court in dismay at a whistle that could have swung the game the Sooners’ direction. Instead, the Cowboys scratched their way to a tight victory.
“Now I know why they call it Bedlam,” Underwood said of his maiden Gallagher-Iba Arena game against OU.
The Cowboys won 96-92, despite trailing by 14 points in the first half, by 13 points with 8 ½ minutes left in the game and by one point with 70 seconds to go. All of which sounds like
a great comeback, unless compared to Bedlam I back in January, when the Cowboys trailed by four with 70 seconds left but won 68-66.
So OSU has a season sweep of the Sooners courtesy of two riproaring games. But that doesn’t mean Bedlam is back to where it belongs.
Truth is, this rivalry has gone a little stagnant, despite the drama of these two games. The Cowboys and Sooners once were staples of Big 12 (and Big Eight) success. From 1992 through 2005, both Bedlam rivals finished in the upper half of the conference nine times in the same season. The Oklahoma schools won every Big 12 Tournament from 2001 through 2005.
But neither has so much as made a Big 12 Tournament final since, and only twice during that time have both finished in the upper half of the league. In 2009, the Blake Griffin year, OU placed second and OSU tied for fourth. In 2013, Marcus Smart’s freshman year, the Cowboys placed third and OU tied for fourth.
“We haven’t been very competitive in this rivalry,” Underwood said of the Cowboys having lost seven straight Bedlams before this season.
But there is reason for hope when it comes to a Bedlam basketball renaissance. Underwood, a home run hire if ever there was one, has the Cowboys competitive again and has the best winning percentage among active Division I head coaches, .823, counting his three great years at Stephen F. Austin.
And OU’s dip this season seems temporary. The Sooners, a Final Four team a year ago, have lots of young talent and McDonald’s AllAmerican Trae Young on the way. It’s not hard to picture Bedlam soon returning to the status of 1995 (Big Country and Ryan Minor), or 2000 (Desmond Mason and Eduardo Najera).
Back in 2002 or thereabouts, I playfully called Bedlam basketball the rivalry of the century. My loophole, of course, was that it was a young century, and North Carolina was down, taking a little sizzle from the UNC-Duke holy war. Nobody really bought it, but it also wasn’t nonsense. Bedlam was a big-time rivalry.
Maybe it can get that way again.
“To me, what makes the college experience special, is rivalries,” Underwood said. “It goes beyond the players and coaches and the team. It encompasses the university and a whole state.”
We’ve had occasional good Bedlams in recent years, but like Saturday night, they came sans high stakes. If Lon Kruger can get the Sooners rolling again — and evidence is overwhelming that he can — and Underwood can keep the Cowboys in an ascending trajectory, Bedlam basketball could resume its rightful place.
Time was, Bedlam MEANT basketball. The term was birthed in wrestling, and it’s more apt for football over the last decade, as OU and OSU have become the Big 12’s top two programs. But for many years, basketball games — Billy Tubbs and Eddie Sutton and Kelvin Sampson; Byron Houston and David Little and Brooks Thompson — made Bedlam live up to its name.
And it did again in two games this winter.
“It cannot be any better than this,” said OSU’s Phil Forte. “We got two wins. Both games were a dogfight, and that is kind of how this rivalry is.”
This is how the rivalry USED to be. And hopefully will be again, very soon.