Oklahoma pulls away for victory over TCU
NORMAN — Down three points entering the final quarter, the Oklahoma women’s basketball team needed a spark — and fast.
Coach Sherri Coale sensed something big was coming from the energy shift in her huddle.
Just 10 seconds in, freshman guard Shaina Pellington dropped in a layup to ignite a firestorm.
That bucket kicked off a 12-0 run to open the fourth quarter and propel the Sooners to an 84-71 victory over TCU at Lloyd Noble Center.
"It took the timeout between the third and fourth quarter to wake up and realize you don’t think basketball during the course of the game, you play basketball and we forgot to play," Coale said.
Pellington scored eight of the 12 points in the run and finished with 20 points in OU’s win.
Guards Gabbi Ortiz and Maddie Manning were also key in the monster run, each adding a layup.
TCU finally scored with 5:13 left, but OU (7-7, 2-1 Big 12) answered with another layup to continue to pull away.
Nearly all of the Sooners’ fourth-quarter points came on layups, and they finished up outscoring TCU 48-30 in the paint.
Pierre-Louis leaves her mark
Less than an hour after Manning was honored for scoring 1,000 career points at Iowa State, senior center Vionise Pierre-Louis celebrated a milestone of her own.
In the second quarter, Pierre-Louis scored her 1,000th career points.
Earlier in the night, Pierre-Louis made her return to the starting lineup after coming off the bench against Iowa State in the previous game.
She finished with 19 points and 12 rebounds in 22 minutes, an improvement from the win against the Cyclones where she made just 1 of 3 field goals.
Thursday marked Pierre-Louis’ first double-digit scoring game since the Dec. 19 loss to Connecticut where she scored 14.
Manning erupts from deep
Manning ignited the Sooners with four triples, including a 4 of 6 mark in the first three quarters of the game.
Her four 3-point buckets were the most threepointers she’d made in a single game all season.
Manning finished with a season-high 22 points, stretching her streak of double-digit scoring games to five.
TCU slips in two buzzer-beaters
With time expiring at the end of the second quarter, TCU guard Adeola Akomolafe drilled a 3-pointer to cut OU’s lead to four entering the break.
But the Horned Frogs (9-5, 0-3) weren’t done with the last minute points.
This time, it was Amy
Okonkwo’s turn in the third quarter. She nailed a layup as time expired to go into the fourth quarter with a three-point lead. .
Thompson returns to Oklahoma
TCU senior guard Toree Thompson, a Broken Arrow product, scored 17 points in a return to her home state.
Thompson was The Oklahoman’s 2014 Super 5 Player of the Year.
She faced off against OU’s Ana Llanusa, the 2017 Super 5 Player of the Year.