LAHAINA, Hawaii -- Little Chaminade played the David role to perfection again.
Maybe it wasn't as monumental as that all-timer over Virginia 28 years ago, but it still felt good.
| Maui Invitational |
Steven Bennett scored on a contested drive with 16 seconds left and Division II
Chaminade (4-2) led by 10 midway through the second half, withstood Oklahoma's late rally and held on down the stretch to set off a wild celebration at midcourt in front of the home-state fans.
Shane Hanson had 23 points, while Mamadou Diarra added 15 points, 11 rebounds and hit two free throws with eight seconds left to seal another victory for the upset specialists.
"For our university and our team, it's something we'll never forget," Chaminade coach Matt Mahar said.
Oklahoma (3-3) shot poorly from the perimeter -- 6 for 22 from 3-point range -- and was outscored 38-26 inside against the smaller Silverswords to finish off a disappointing tournament with one of its ugliest losses in years.
Cade Davis led Oklahoma with 24 points, but shot an airball on a potential tying 3-pointer in the closing seconds.
"I thought we did some good things, [but] we're just a team who can't afford to have lulls in the game like he had this morning," Oklahoma coach Jeff Capel said.
Chaminade has a knack for pulling the occasional upset, including one of the most monumental in college basketball history, over top-ranked Virginia on neighboring Oahu in 1982. The Silverswords are only 6-73 all time in the Maui Tournament, but a few of those victories were upsets against bigger programs, including Villanova in 2003 and Princeton in 2007.
Chaminade nearly pulled off another major one for the underdogs in the tournament's first round, leading No. 2 Michigan State into the second half before the mighty Spartans pulled away.
The Silverswords had another, albeit less-powerful, team from a major conference on the ropes again, leading Oklahoma 57-48 with about eight minutes left after Hanson hit a pair of 3-pointers from the same spot on the wing.
Hanson kept the Sooners at bay with jumpers and 3-pointers for a little while, but Davis helped rally Oklahoma late, hitting three consecutive 3-pointers to tie the game at 62 with three minutes left.
Chaminade went back up two on a post spin move by Diarra, but Oklahoma tied it with 48 seconds left on Andrew Fitzgerald's wide-open layup on an inbound play.
That set the stage for Bennett, the speedy 5-foot-6 guard who has been giving bigger players fits all tournament. After a series of timeouts, he took the ball in the backcourt and rushed forward, lifting a shot over the outstretched arm of a defender for the go-ahead points.
Davis missed, Diarra hit his free throws and the Silverswords rushed the floor after one final Sooners miss, screaming and high-fiving each other on the Maui Invitational logo at center court.
"This tournament is truly everything for us, especially our basketball program," Mahar said
The Sooners are young and inexperienced, but they didn't figure to have this much trouble in Maui.
Oklahoma was respectable in the opener against another young team, No. 8 Kentucky, keeping it close until the last few minutes. The bottom fell out for the Sooners in the second round against Virginia, though, struggling at both ends in a close-to-embarrassing 74-56 loss to a team still trying to find itself.
Oklahoma punctuated the disappointing tournament with debilitating loss to a tiny school from a small island.
"We're such young group and we're a fragile group," Capel said. "We did some really good things in the first game I thought we could build off of, but then we responded the next day and didn't play with the urgency like we did against Kentucky. And I thought we started off well today, but again we have the lulls in the game where we kind of look like we're out of sync."
