ESPN Classic Programming Alert: II

[Sooner04]

It comes around every March, and you can almost set your watch to it. It is driven into your skull as a pillar of all that is constant, all that is inevitable. A 16-seed has never defeated a 1-seed in the NCAA Tournament.

But in 1989, it damn near happened.

At 4 PM you'll see a mighty OU team absolutely on the ropes in Nashville. Stacey "Sky" King, Mookie Blaylock, Tyrone Jones and Skeeter Henry. They were the Big 8 Champions for crying out loud, and they damn near became the answer to the most hideous trivia question in the history of sports, all at the hands of East Tennessee State and a man they called "Mister", Keith Jennings.

Tune in and try to keep down your lunch because we certainly made it FAR beyond interesting.

 

[Big Old Booger]

It comes around every March, and you can almost set your watch to it. It is driven into your skull as a pillar of all that is constant, all that is inevitable. A 16-seed has never defeated a 1-seed in the NCAA Tournament.

But in 1989, it damn near happened.

At 4 PM you'll see a mighty OU team absolutely on the ropes in Nashville. Stacey "Sky" King, Mookie Blaylock, Tyrone Jones and Skeeter Henry. They were the Big 8 Champions for crying out loud, and they damn near became the answer to the most hideous trivia question in the history of sports, all at the hands of East Tennessee State and a man they called "Mister", Keith Jennings.

Tune in and try to keep down your lunch because we certainly made it FAR beyond interesting.

I'll never forget that game. I was a sr. in high school and had a soccer game that night, so I was listening to the game in my car. We had been in a slump getting pasted by Mizzou 2 times -- in Columbia and the finals of the Big 8 tourney in KC -- in the previous 6 or 7 games. We also struggled to beat CU and ISU on consecutive days in Kansas City, so I was afraid we would struggle but sure didn't expect to get beaten by the 16 seed, but it almost happened.

Somehow we came back to win, which was a big surprise considering we were down by 16 with a few minutes to play. Then after we win, 2 days later we pasted La Tech, Mookie hit a half-court shot at the end of regulation to make the final margin over 40 and I thought we were back and ready to make a run to the Final 4 and an NC.

Then we played like crap against UVa and got beat in the Sweet 16.

The 88-89 team peaked way too soon...we played our best basketball when we won at UNLV and beat Mizzou and Arizona in Norman. These 3 games were over a 2-3 week span.