University of Oklahoma Athletics
It Takes Two: OU's Run to the 1947 Title Game
December 16, 2016 | Men's Basketball
During halftime of Saturday's game against Memphis, Oklahoma will honor the 70th anniversary of the 1946-1947 team that competed in the Final Four and national championship game. Former players Elton Davis and Charles Pugsley are expected to attend along with Pauline Pryor, wife of the late Ken Pryor.
Of the 89 times the Sooners and Longhorns have faced in men's basketball, no game had higher stakes than March 22, 1947. Sure, the OU-Texas hardwood contests have decided conference titles, postseason seeding and state pride throughout the past century, but 70 years ago in Kansas City, it meant a trip to the national championship.
Coached by OU legend Bruce Drake, the 1946-47 Sooners advanced to the Final Four for the second time in program history, defeating Texas, 55-54, before losing in the national title game to Holy Cross.
The Sooners were an older team than today's college squads (six of the 12 roster players were 23 or older), as most of the players had interrupted their college careers to serve the United States' armed forces during World War II. They were also talented.
The 1946-47 Oklahoma men's basketball team.
Drake's group was led by Helms Foundation National Player of the Year Gerald Tucker. An Army first-lieutenant, Tucker had stayed in basketball shape the season before by coaching and playing with his fellow soldiers in Honshu, Japan, and winning the national service basketball championship. Back in Norman for the 1946-47 season, the 23-year-old led the Big Six in scoring with 13.7 points per game during conference play.
Tucker paced the Sooners to a then-school-record 24 wins (the previous high was 19), including an 8-2 record in Big Six play. The historic season rewarded the Sooners with their third trip to the NCAA Tournament under Drake.
Before the days of 64-team brackets, sold-out indoor football stadiums and One Shining Moment, the NCAA Tournament was comprised of just eight teams. Four teams would play a regional in the east at Madison Square Garden and four teams would play a regional in the west at Kansas City Municipal Auditorium with the two regional champions meeting in the championship.
The Sooners narrowly defeated Oregon State, 56-54, in the opening round of the Kansas City regional and were slated against Texas in the regional final the next night.
You couldn't write a more storybook ending.
Oklahoma and Texas had met once earlier in the year, with the Longhorns winning by 12 in the Oklahoma City All-College Classic. The Horns continued to power past the Sooners, taking a 29-22 lead into halftime. The Sooners rallied in the second half and led by as many as nine in the second period. Tucker had a team-high 15 points and two-time All-American Paul Courty scored 10.
Helms Foundation National Player of the Year Gerald Tucker.
But the Longhorns didn't back away. Texas fought back in the final minutes and tied the game at 53 with 25 seconds remaining. UT's Slater Martin hit a free throw to put the Horns ahead 54-53 with time for just one more Oklahoma trip down to court.
The Sooners ran one of their common sets, where Tucker would get the ball near the foul line, draw in the defense and pass it to All-Big Six selection Dick Reich. Surprisingly, the Texas defense didn't come up to cover Tucker, giving the National Player of the Year an open shot to put the Sooners in the national title game.
But Tucker didn't take the shot.
The three-time All American passed up the open look and flung the ball to the wing to a reserve guard named Ken Pryor. Serving in the Navy the year before and without a field goal to his name in the NCAA Tournament, Pryor held the ball in the corner with a defender in his face and five seconds on the clock. The unlikely hero hoisted a two-handed jump shot over his defender on the left wing and, with the help from some Sooner Magic, banked in one of the most famous shots in Oklahoma hoops history.
“I had practiced a two-handed jump shot and that's what I shot, because the guy guarding me had his hands in my face,” Pryor recollected to the Tulsa World in a 1987 column. “I think it was the only time I ever took a two-handed jump shot in a game.”
With their tickets punched to face Holy Cross in the national championship in New York, the Sooners left the arena to literally have their tickets punched for New York. Long before the days of chartered team flights, the Sooners took an overnight train to Chicago immediately following the win over Texas. After a quick breakfast in the city, they departed on another train headed for New York, arriving in the early evening the night before the title game at Madison Square Garden.
Reserve guard Ken Pryor.
The Crusaders, meanwhile, had played their first two tournament games in the Big Apple and were patiently waiting for the Sooners to arrive by train.
Tucker scored 22 points in the final game, but after playing tournament games in Kansas City on Friday and Saturday and being cooped in a train car all day Sunday, the fatigue finally caught up to the Sooners' magical run. Holy Cross outscored OU 10-2 in the final three minutes and won, 58-47.
"It was terrible that we didn't get the chance we should have had,” Pryor told the Oklahoman in a 1988 piece. “I honestly think we were better than Holy Cross. In fact, Texas probably had the best team in the country that year. Darned if I know how we beat them."
In the first 79 years of Oklahoma basketball, 1947 was the closest the Sooners ever came to winning a national title. In 1988, under the leadership of Billy Tubbs and the skills of Mookie Blaylock, Harvey Grant and Stacey King, Oklahoma returned to both the Final Four and the national championship game before it fell to Kansas, 83-79.
The Sooners have made five Final Four appearances throughout program history, most recently last season's run to NRG Stadium in Houston. Through all the tournament runs, memorable moments and over 100 years of history, perhaps no shot has meant more than Pryor's game-winner over Texas.
Even if it was two-handed.
