OU Eyes Outright Big 12 Championship

NORMAN, Okla. -- The No. 9 Oklahoma women's basketball team (22-4, 12-0 Big 12) will attempt to clinch the outright Big 12 Regular Season Championship on Saturday night at 7 p.m., when No. 23/21 Texas A&M (19-6, 8-4) visits the Lloyd Noble Center. OU has already clinched a share of the title but can seal its fourth Big 12 Championship with a win over the Aggies this weekend. Local fans can catch the game on KOKC (1520 AM) with Brian Brinkley on play-by-play and Tara DeGiusti on color commentary.

Oklahoma has won 10 straight games and is undefeated at 12-0 in conference play. The winning streak is the longest since a 10-gamer than led into the 2002 National Championship Game. OU's conference run is the best start in league play. No team has gone undefeated in Big 12 play but three teams have posted 15-1 records, including OU in 2000-01.

Sherri Coale's crew extended its winning streak to double-digits with a 61-54 defeat of Texas in Austin on Wednesday night. OU was able to overcome some sloppy play by holding the Longhorns to 32 percent shooting (21-66) and holding a 47-37 advantage in rebounding. The 20 points and 20 rebounds by Wooden Award Candidate Courtney Paris guided the Sooners efforts, while OU also needed every one of Leah Rush's 12 points.

O-Zone Live | Purchase Tickets | Paris Up For Naismith

Texas A&M had won three straight games before dropping a 84-59 decision to Baylor in College Station on Wednesday. Although both teams have four losses, A&M dropped into third place behind Baylor since it lost the season series with the Lady Bears.

After Saturday, OU hits the road again with a trip to Kansas State for a Tuesday game at Bramlage Coliseum. The squads will tip at 7 p.m. , in a live Fox Sports Southwest broadcast.

Setting The Scene
Date: Saturday, Feb. 18, 2006
Location: Norman, Okla.
Tipoff: 7 p.m. CST
Venue: Lloyd Noble Center
TV: None
Webcast: O-Zone
Radio: KOKC (1520 AM)
Radio Talent: Brian Brinkley (Play-by-Play) & Tara DeGiusti
Tickets: (800) 456-GoOU

Player To Watch
Senior Laura Andrews will play in her second to last home game on Saturday. The Washington, Okla., native has been a integral part of OU's success this season and will be relied upon heavily against Texas A&M. Andrews will come off the bench early and often against A&M's full court pressure. The guard scored 14 points in 14 minutes earlier in the season when OU defeated Texas A&M in College Station by a score of 81-72.

Texas Leftovers
(AP) - Courtney Paris scored 20 points and No. 9 Oklahoma held off Texas 61-54 on Wednesday night to stay perfect in Big 12 play and clinch at least a share of the Big 12 Regular Season Championship.

Paris shot 10-of-12 from the floor and grabbed 20 rebounds, but was held without a field goal in the final nine minutes as the Longhorns put up a furious bid to end the Sooners' run at becoming the first team to go undefeated in the Big 12.

The Sooners (22-4, 12-0) hit five of eight free throws in the final minute and Paris grabbed her 20th rebound off a miss by Britney Brown with 20 seconds left to keep possession and end any hopes of an upset by Texas.

Nina Norman scored 24 to lead Texas (12-11, 6-6), which has lost three in a row without injured center Tiffany Jackson, their leading scorer and rebounder. Texas is 1-8 against ranked teams this season in a schedule ranked as the fourth-toughest in the country.

Texas did a good job early defending Paris, using lanky freshman center Ashley Lindsey's long arms to deny her entry passes. Even so, she snared every rebound she touched and had a double-double by halftime with 12 points on 6-of-7 shooting and 12 rebounds.

The Sooners held the biggest lead of the first half when Higgins hit a 3-pointer, Paris blocked a layup and Chelsi Welch ran up court to hit another 3 that made it 27-18.

Postgame Notes
OU clinched at least a share of the Big 12 Regular Season Championship with the win and Texas A&M loss to Baylor. The Sooners can clinch the outright title when they meet the Aggies on Saturday in Norman.
OU is now 10-19 in the all-time series with Texas and 3-10 in Austin. OU won at the Erwin Center for the first time since 2001, a span of four games. OU swept the season series from the Longhorns.
Courtney Paris established a new Big 12 single-season record for rebounds with 20 boards in today's contests and 390 on the season. Paris broke the previous record of Angie Welle of Iowa State (2001-02). The OU single season rebounding record is 399 and is held by Shelly Fisher (1983-83).
Paris also established a new OU single season record for blocks with five against UT and 81 on the season. She surpassed the previous record of LaNae Jones that had stood since 1995-96.
Paris established another OU single-season record as she claimed the offensive rebounds mark with five today and 128 on the season.
Paris notched her 18th consecutive double-double and her 23rd of the season. Both marks are OU and Big 12 records, in addition to being NCAA bests for 2005-06.
Erin Higgins snapped a two-game 3-point drought with a pair of treys against Texas. Higgins has made at least two treys in 18 games this season.

Big 12 History
The Oklahoma Sooners went 8-8 in the Big 12 last season and finished in a tie for sixth place. All-time, OU has a 93-63 (.596) Big 12 record under head coach Sherri Coale. The Sooners have won four regular season titles (2000, 2001, 2002, 2006) and two conference tournaments (2002, 2004). The Sooners were picked to finish fourth in the Big 12 Coaches Preseason Poll this season, behind No. 1 Baylor, No. 2 Texas and No. 3 Texas Tech.

This season Oklahoma is 12-0 in conference, which is a Big 12 record for consecutive wins to start a season. OU's longest conference winning streak within a season is 14, set during the 2000-01 season. OU also won 18 from 2000-01 to 2001-02. Both streaks are Big 12 records. Overall, OU is 52-26 (.667) in Big 12 games played at the Lloyd Noble Center and 42-37 (.532) in conference road contests.

Junior Leah Rush was named to the Coaches Preseason All-Big 12 Team and freshman Courtney Paris was selected by the coaches as the Preseason Freshman of the Year.

Texas Tidbits
Texas A&M is 19-6 overall and 8-4 in the Big 12 play. The Aggies are in third place after dropping a 84-59 decision to No. 11 Baylor on Wednesday. Prior to the contest with the Lady Bears, A&M had not lost since falling to the Sooners, 81-72, on Jan. 28.

The Aggies head coach is Gary Blair, who is in his third season in College Station and has accumulated a 44-39 record. Blair held the head coachig post at Arkansas and Stephen F. Austin before taking the reigns at A&M. Blair has guided teams to five Sweet 16s and reached the Final Four in 1998 with the Lady Backs.

A&M is led by 2005 Big 12 Newcomer of the Year Morenike Atunrase, who is averaging 13.3 points and 3.6 rebounds per game. OU was able to hold the Aggies leading scorer to five points on Jan. 28. The Sooners were not able to slow down Aggie point guard A'Quonesia Franklin, who scored 20 points and dished out 10 assists. Franklin is averaging 9.3 points per game and is coming off an eight assist game against Baylor.

Despite committing 17 turnovers in the first meeting, OU was able to post a three-point lead at half time and squash any A&M threat in the second half. OU shot 59 percent for the game and knocked down 4-of-8 three point attempts. Courtney Paris had 18 points to lead five Sooners in double figures. Chelsi Welch and Britney Brown were not far behind with 16 points apiece.

OU leads the all-time series with A&M 22-8 and has not dropped a game to the Aggies since 2003, a span of seven contests. OU has only lost once to the A&M in Norman in 13 games. That loss came in 1991 and has been followed by 10 consecutive Sooner wins.

Pregame Layups
The 2005-06 team is on pace to be the greatest rebounding team in OU history ... The previous record for boards in a season is 1,443 set by the 1983-84 squad ... According to ESPN.com's Bracketology, OU is on pace to be a No. 3 seed, while CSTV.com's Bracketanica has OU as a No. 2 seed ... Oklahoma City native Danielle Gant leads the Aggies in rebounding and is one of the top rookies in the Big 12 ... The Putnam City West product is averaging 8.6 points and 5.3 rebounds per game.

Outright Clinching Scenarios
Oklahoma needs one win in its final four games to clinch the outright Big 12 Regular Season Championship. OU has already clinched the No. 1 seed in the postseason tournament regardless of it record in the final four games. OU has a four-game lead in the standings with four to play, but if the scenario presented itself, OU owns the tie-breaker with all three four loss teams remaining in the Big 12 (Baylor, Missouri, Texas A&M).

Rush Scores 1,000th Career Point
Junior Leah Rush became the 19th player in OU history and the ninth fastest to 1,000 points on Feb. 12 when she tallied 12 points against Baylor. Rush, who has averaged 11.4 points during her career, needed 88 games to reach the milestone. Currently, Rush has 1,013 points in her three year career.

What Brown Can Do For OU
Junior point guard Britney Brown's improved play since the start of the Big 12 season has been a major factor in OU's surge to the top of the league standings. Brown is averaging 8.3 points and 4.5 assists per game in Big 12 play. Both marks trump her non-conference averages (3.5 and 2.8) by hefty margins (4.8 in points, 1.7 in assists). The Norman native has taken advantage of opponents sagging defense by increasing her offensive output, especially lately when she has scored in double figures in three of the last four contests.

NCAA Impact
Courtney Paris is putting together one of the best freshman seasons in NCAA history and if she continues her current pace the record books will show it. Stretched out over a 32-game season, which includes the remainder of the regular season, one Big 12 Championship game and one NCAA Tournament game, she is on pace to collect 480 rebounds, which would top the current record of 443 by Ida Johnson (Delta State, 1982). She is also on pace (688 points) for the fifth best scoring season by a rookie in NCAA history. She is on pace to collect 99 blocks, which is just two swats short of the NCAA freshman record.

	Courtney Paris	Cheryl Miller	Lisa Leslie	Anne Donovan	Rebecca Lobo	Clarissa Davis-Wrightsil
School	Oklahoma	USC	USC	Old Dominion	UConn	Texas
Season	2005-06	1982-83	1990-91	1979-80	1991-92	1985-86
PPG	21.5	20.4	19.4	17.0	14.3	13.5
FG %	.628	.551	.478	.630	.494	.560
RPG	15.0	9.7	10.0	12.9	7.9	7.7
Blocks	81	79	78	227	46	23

Fan Support At Record Levels
Off to a 21-4 start and ranked No. 9, the Oklahoma women's basketball team is enjoying record support from Sooner fans this season.

All 11 of OU's regular season home games this season have been attended by 5,000 or more fans. Additionally, all five of their pre-January games were attended by 5,000-plus, which tops the previous best of three games.

For the Feb. 12 game against Baylor, OU set a state record for a women's basketball game with a turnout of 12,112. It broke th previous record of 12,080 set when Tennessee came to the Lloyd Noble Center in 2003.

The Sooners turnout of 8,727 for the game with Michigan State was the third highest pre-January turnout and the 11th best crowd in OU history. Currently, OU is ranked No. 9 nationally in average attendance with 6,863, which is a program record. Every home game this season has ranked among the top-45 attendances in program history.

Season tickets sales are at an all-time high with 4,000-plus packages already sold. In mid-October the fan support helped OU race past the previous record of 3,512 season tickets, which was set the season (2002-03) after OU reached its first Final Four. It took only a few weeks for the sales to surpass 4,000 and set a new standard for Sooner support.

The women's hoops team is also receiving record support from fans that can't make it out to the arena. Some 200-plus viewers tuned into the O-Zone's live webcast of the Dec. 5 game against No. 22 UCLA. It marked a record turnout for any event, regardless of sport, for the premium pay-site O-Zone.

A Little Bit of RPI Love
Oklahoma has held steady at No. 6 in the NCAA RPI rankings after three weeks of announcements. The ranking is up from their poll positions of No. 9 in both the AP and Coaches Polls.

Oklahoma is slated behind (in order) Tennessee, Connecticut, LSU, Duke and North Carolina. Baylor is ranked No. 12 and is the only other Big 12 Team in the top-25.

The official RPI is used as one of many tools to select teams to participate in the championships. Developed in 1981, the RPI provides supplemental data in the evaluation of teams for at-large selection and seeding of the championship bracket is only one of many pieces of information available to the committees. Qualitative factors such as games missed by student-athletes or coaches and a team's performance in the latter portion of the season cannot be reliably measured by a statistical model. However, such factors are among the details of each team considered by the committees.

Ratings Record
Oklahoma's 81-77 overtime victory (Feb. 12) over defending national champion Baylor was the highest-rated regular season women's basketball telecast of all time on FSN Southwest with a 4.0 Nielsen household average rating in Oklahoma City.

It topped the previous regular-season record of 3.7, also set in Oklahoma City on Feb. 27, 2002 for Texas Tech-Oklahoma. The Baylor-OU telecast received its largest audience in the final quarter-hour, scoring a 6.1 rating from 4:30-4:45 PM CT during the game's overtime period.

FSN Southwest's highest-rated women's basketball telecast ever (regular season and playoffs) also belongs to Oklahoma. The Sooners' 2004 Big 12 Tournament championship victory over Texas on March 13, 2004 registered a 6.6 household rating in Oklahoma City.

University of Oklahoma Athletics

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