Senior duo lead the way for ORU
PULLMAN – Dissect Thursday’s first-round NCAA tournament game all you want. Eventually, from the perspective of Washington State’s opponent, everything comes down to one simple concept.
“This is Oral Roberts’ shot, really,” the Golden Eagles’ senior star, Caleb Green, said.
The private school located in Tulsa, Okla., had a shot last season, too. But as a No. 16 seed playing against top-seeded Memphis – no No. 1 seed has ever lost in the first round since the NCAA field expanded to 64 teams – the Golden Eagles stood little chance.
Now, having inched up the bracket to a 14 on the heels of another conference championship, Green and his teammates know this year represents everything a low- major conference team can hope for.
“It’d be huge for a program like ours to win the game,” head coach Scott Sutton said. “The NCAA tournament brings so much exposure. I think it’d be hard to really tell the impact of what it would mean to our program for maybe a year or so.”
There’s one more reason Sutton has to think his Golden Eagles’ golden chance is now. Green and Ken Tutt account for more than 50 percent of the team’s points, and both are seniors.
Oral Roberts streaked to a 23-10 record this season on the strength of those two players, with Green, the power forward, scoring more than 20 points a game inside and Tutt, a shooting guard, averaging more than 16 points on the outside.
“Me and Caleb, both, we’ve accomplished a lot in our career but we’ve failed to win a game in the NCAA tournament, and that’s our biggest goal,” Tutt said. “It’s great playing with a guy like him because he’s so unselfish and he wants to win so bad. I already know every time I step out on the court that he’s going to go to battle with me.”
And Oral Roberts has certainly proven it can play with the big boys this season. In its second contest of the year, the Golden Eagles defeated Kansas on the road, thanks to Green’s superior passing out of double teams.
They lost road games to three other tournament teams in Georgetown, BYU and Arkansas, but with the magic of the NCAA bracket all they’ll need is one superior game against the Cougars to make a name for themselves nationally.
“Our kids have been tested,” said Sutton, who, like WSU’s Tony Bennett, is the son of a coaching legend in former Oklahoma State coach Eddie Sutton. “They’ve been toughened up a little bit. I think that experience will help us come Thursday.”
Scott Sutton and his players seemed to agree that they were caught off guard by the attention that came along with the NCAA bid last season. This time, they believe nothing taking place in Sacramento will come as a surprise.
And they can only hope that WSU suffers the same fate ORU did a year ago.
“The thing that shocked me the most was how much media attention there was,” Tutt said. “There were cameras everywhere, everybody knew about you. It was just a great atmosphere for basketball and sometimes you just get caught up in it. I think we need to do a better job, especially me and Caleb, of keeping everybody focused and keeping everybody at the job at hand.
“It’s a great opportunity for us to maybe get the upset and make some noise in the tournament.”