Jordan Woodard's late-game heroics doom No. 7 West Virginia to puzzling home loss

Through the first two weeks of Big 12 play, there didn’t appear to be too many easier games than a home date with Oklahoma. The Sooners started 0-4 in the league, were under .500 overall, and had lost seven in a row over a 32-day span.

Those Sooners, however, didn’t have Jordan Woodard.

The Sooners that travelled to Morgantown, West Virginia on Wednesday night did, and they shocked the seventh-ranked Mountaineers, 89-87 in overtime.

Woodard hit a circus shot to send the game to an extra-session, and actually missed the and-one free throw that could have won Oklahoma the game in regulation.

Then, the senior guard — the lone returning star from last year’s Buddy Hield-led Final Four team — did it again to give the Sooners a lead with under a minute to play in overtime:

And finally, after West Virginia’s Jevon Carter made one of two free throws to tie the score at 87 with under 8 seconds remaining, Woodard went coast to coast to win the game for Oklahoma in heroic fashion:

Woodard, in just his third game back from a leg injury that caused him to miss four contests, exploded for 18 points in the second half and overtime to deal the Mountaineers their second Big 12 loss. Without him, Oklahoma looked destined to complete one of the worst Final Four follow-ups ever. With him, the Sooners can make some noise over the last month-and-a-half of the season.

That’s exactly what they did Wednesday night. The Sooners as a team asked a serious question of Bob Huggins’ squad: Can West Virginia win consistently without forcing turnovers?

West Virginia’s first conference loss, at Texas Tech in a similarly wild overtime finish, featured the same theme as Wednesday’s defeat: turnovers. The Mountaineers, so renowned for their full-court pressure, couldn’t force them. Over 45 minutes, Oklahoma coughed up the ball just 12 times, one fewer than the Red Raiders had two weeks earlier. For comparison’s sake, Baylor had 29 turnovers when it travelled to Morgantown last week, more than Oklahoma and Texas Tech combined.

The Mountaineers have the most vaunted press in college basketball, but when it’s not performing its desired function, they might just be vulnerable. They conceded 1.13 points per possession to the Sooners, well above their season average of 0.862.

It’s not as if Lon Krueger and Oklahoma exposed something about the press that other teams will be able to exploit. The loss is also just a small scratch on West Virginia’s résumé, though it does make a potential Big 12 title challenge seem a bit more far-fetched.

But it’s at least worth noting that when Plan A isn’t being carried out as expected, Plan B still isn’t entirely formulated. That might be the next step for Huggins and West Virginia.