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OU women's basketball: Taylor Robertson's buzzer beater lifts Sooners over K-State

Feb. 27—Kansas State's Laura Macke made a jumper to tie the game.

Oklahoma inbounded it to Taylor Robertson, who brought the ball up with 22 seconds to go with the chance to tie or win.

Robertson passed it off to Kennedy Tucker on the left wing, who threw the ball to Madi Williams at the free throw line. Williams drove and kicked it out to Nydia Lampkin, who made an extra pass to the corner.

It was Robertson on the receiving end, who caught the ball and quickly fired right before the buzzer sounded.

It went through the net, and Robertson's game-winning shot sealed the Sooners' 72-69 win over the Wildcats Saturday at Lloyd Noble Center.

The senior guard, who broke the NCAA women's record for career 3-pointers earlier this year, was confident she had made the shot.

"I knew as soon as it left my hand, I knew it was going to go in," Robertson said. "It looked good, it felt good and it was right on line."

The shot capped off a back-and-forth game that saw the Sooners learn from their mistakes.

The Wildcats won the first between these two teams, 94-65, back in January. There were two key things that worked against the Sooners: KSU center Ayoka Lee took advantage of her size and scored an NCAA-record 61 points, and the Wildcats won the rebounding advantage 34-21.

Neither happened again this time. The Sooners won the rebounding battle 38-34 and limited Lee to just 13 points on 6-of-13 shooting.

The Sooners' worked harder to prevent Lee from catching the ball near the rim. and though their increased focus on Lee opened up things on the perimeter — KSU guard Serena Sundee scored a game-high 24 points — the Sooners were able to keep the Wildcats from dominating the paint.

Baranczyk said she was really looking for her team to improve defensively from that first meeting.

"We knew we had to do something different, obviously," OU coach Jennie Baranczyk said. "I thought our players did a nice job... of being able to completely change our defense essentially to be able to do that. I thought this was one of the best times that we've made in-game adjustments defensively.

"It's not that we changed everything in terms of a game plan, but we did have to game plan for this one because we don't have size to match size, so we have to get creative. and I feel like today, we got creative."

Neither team gained an advantage for much of the game. The Sooners led for most of the first half and took a six-point lead into halftime, but a 23-17 third-quarter advantage for the Wildcats tied the game going into the fourth quarter.

Robertson, who had only scored only five points entering the fourth quarter, proved to be the difference maker. She scored 12 of her 17 points in the quarter and all four of her 3-pointers, including the game-winner.

"My teammates were really trying to set me up," Robertson said. "A lot of it was off a ball screen or in transition, they were really looking for me and trying to put me in a good spot to be able to get my shot off. I was just trying to be patient and not force up a whole bunch because I hadn't been shooting. I was just trying to let it come to me because eventually it always does."

Madi Williams led the team with 18 points and 10 rebounds. Skylar Vann added 10 points and Navaeh Tot finished with nine.

The Sooners (22-6, 11-5 Big 12) travel to Stillwater to take on Oklahoma State Wednesday at 6:30.

Jesse Crittenden is the sports editor of The Transcript and covers OU athletics. Reach him at jesse@normantranscript.com or at 405-366-3580