Oklahoma Basketball: Early exit in NCAA Tournament doesn’t take away from Trae Young’s magical season
Despite another big game from Trae Young, Oklahoma is going home after losing to Rhode Island in the NCAA Tournament. Yet it doesn’t change anything about the season the freshman had.
The first game of the opening day of the 2018 NCAA Tournament was in Pittsburgh between Oklahoma and Rhode Island, with the winner taking on either Duke or Iona in the second-round. While the game was close for the most part in regulation, the Rams took a solid lead heading into the final minutes.
That’s where once again Trae Young took over. He scored 12 of the Sooners 15 points in a stretch to tie things up, to head into overtime. He did his best to push Oklahoma over the finish line, ending with 28 points on 9/18 shooting, along with seven assists and six turnovers.
This game was essentially a repeat of the Sooner’s season, with Young needed a huge performance just to keep his team in it. There are those who are turned off by his shot selection, but based on how his teammates played, can you blame him?
In the loss to Rhode Island, players not named Young shot 20-51 from the field, and 1/11 from three-point range. And while Young’s defense isn’t the best in the world, neither was the other Sooners.
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Young was the darling of college basketball in the first half of the season, leading the country in both scoring and assists while making ridiculous 30-footers. But the opposing teams in the Big 12 figured out how to slow him down, causing Oklahoma to lose 11 of 15 down the stretch to limp into the NCAA Tournament.
Much of the blame was heaped on Young, unfairly in my opinion. Remember, his teammates were part of last year’s 11-20 disastrous season, and an argument could be made that none of the other starters on the team would be in the other Big 12 lineups.
It was Young who carried his team to wins over Wichita State, TCU (2x), Texas Tech and Kansas. How many other guys could singlehandedly carry their team to the NCAA Tournament from the toughest conference in college basketball? Even Marvin Bagley III and DeAndre Ayton have All-Conference players besides them.
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So yes, it wasn’t the finish Young and Oklahoma fans were hoping for. But let’s not act like he wasn’t one of, if not the best player in college basketball this season. What he did was historic and exciting, the likes of which we might not see for a long time.