Sooners try to bounce back from woes

Dante Buford didn’t think he’d ever be in the situation he found himself in earlier this week.

Over the last two years, Buford watched a pair of teammates go to the freethrow line in the waning seconds of a tight contest with a chance to virtually put the game away and fail to do so.

Those misses helped lead to a pair of heartbreaking losses.

Monday against Oklahoma State, Buford was at the line with his team up three, 1:08 remaining and a chance to put the clamps on a Bedlam victory.

Buford missed both, helping the Cowboys stay in the game. OSU took advantage, and Phil Forte’s 3-pointer was the deciding factor in a 68-66 win.

So entering Saturday’s game at Texas Tech, Buford is in the same situation that Khadeem Lattin and Kameron McGusty were over the past two seasons.

“We did have a couple of those, and I always said to myself, ‘When I get into that position, I’m going to knock them down,’” Buford said. “But unfortunately, that wasn’t the case.”

Buford said he thought both shots were good when they left his fingers, but one came up short, banging off the front of the rim.

The other free throw attempt was long, careening off the back of the rim.

Like Lattin a year ago, in what wound up being an epic 109-106 triple-overtime loss at Kansas, and McGusty in mid-January in a loss at Texas, Buford’s misses came in a game where he was a bright spot.

Buford played a seasonhigh 21 minutes after a turned ankle limited Kristian Doolittle’s effectiveness.

Buford, a redshirt sophomore, responded with a pair of big 3-pointers late in the game that helped the Sooners recover from a double-digit deficit to take a late lead.

“It got to me after the game, but after that, I know there’s nothing I can do about it,” Buford said. “The only thing I can do is knock them down next time I get on the line.”

In that Kansas game, Lattin had 10 points, 14 rebounds, six blocks, a steal and just two turnovers. But he missed a free throw, with the game tied and 2.1 seconds remaining in regulation.

Against Texas, McGusty was at the line with 10 seconds left and the Sooners up two. It was a chance to make it a two-possession game.

McGusty, who had a then-career-high 21 points in that game, missed them both. Texas won on a 3-pointer.

“That was a tough one,” McGusty said. “It took awhile, but I understand that it happens. I just have to take it as a learning experience.”

Part of moving past something like that, Lattin said, is realizing that it’s not as simple as boiling a game down to a missed free throw.

“It’s just magnified,” Lattin said. “But there were seven different incidents in the last 30 seconds that had that gone different, we would have won.”