Young nearly gets triple double FOREVER YOUNG
NORMAN — Trae Young dribbled nonchalantly up the court, more concerned with waving his teammates in position than with Oklahoma State’s Tavarius Shine right in front of him.
Then, with 19 seconds remaining on the shot clock, Oklahoma’s freshman point guard coldly pulled up and nailed a 3-pointer about four feet beyond the line.
Young was quiet offensively — well, as quiet as Trae Young can be offensively — for much of the game until right before that shot.
Then he was anything but. Young roared to life and lifted the No. 7 Sooners from leading the game to blowing it open in a what became a 109-89 win in front of a packed
house at Lloyd Noble Center on Wednesday night.
Seconds after that long 3-pointer, Young and Shine were called for double technicals after jawing at each other as they made the move back down court.
“I wanted to get the juices flowing, within our team, with the crowd,” Young said. “It’s Bedlam. This is what you play for. You want to be the team that runs the state.”
Young wound up with 27 points, 10 assists and 9 rebounds in the win, continuing his torrid pace as the nation’s leading scorer and assist man.
“I didn’t play the best I could,” Young said. “I don’t even think I played good at all to be honest with you.”
He barely missed out on the first points-rebounds-assists tripledouble in Oklahoma history, though he still found a way to accomplish something no other Sooners player has ever done.
But before that 3-pointer, Young had made his mark mostly through his aggressiveness.
Young didn’t score much early but got his teammates involved — hitting Rashard Odomes for an assist on a dunk and Brady Manek for a helper on a 3-pointer, both coming less than 80 seconds into the game.
He also drew suffocating defense from the Cowboys, which came with a price.
Young found contact repeatedly early and drew several fouls.
Early, it helped the Sooners get into the bonus quicker and played a part in Oklahoma taking 17 free throws in the first half. Kameron McGusty alone took eight first-half free throws.
Later in the half, it was Young himself who benefitted, driving to the basket and finding contact and knocking down a handful of free throws himself.
During a one-minute stretch that started with a jumper with 17:26 remaining that put the Sooners up 13, Young scored eight consecutive points.
Young absorbed the technical foul easily. For Shine, it was the first in a stretch of three quick ones.
“It’s just competitiveness,” Young said. “Two players, two teams competing at a high level. Little chippiness there. If I could go back and do it over again, I wouldn’t take it back because it got out team going, it got the crowd going.”
By the time five minutes remained in the game and the Sooners had the game well in hand, two of Oklahoma State’s starters — Shine and Mitchell Solomon — had fouled out.
With an already shorthand lineup with no Lindy Waters — one of Oklahoma State’s best defenders — that made Oklahoma State’s mission to pull off a Bedlam upset even more unlikely.
Young had a chance to grab another rebound in the final minutes when OSU’s Thomas Dziagwa let a 3-pointer fly. But Young got boxed out and Kameron McGusty grabbed the rebound instead.
With the crowd depleted with 1:16 to go and the game well in hand, Young calmly sank his 12th free throw of the game and left for the bench, with the most rousing ovation that the thinning crowd — still bigger than many last season — could muster.
In the midst of what’s already a special season, Young turned in yet another special game.