BATON ROUGE, La. - Oklahoma's Buddy Hield took over while LSU's Ben Simmons disappeared late but it was two other Sooners who came up big in the closing seconds.
Isaiah Cousins hit a jumper with less than four seconds left and Khadeem Lattin swatted away Tim Quarterman's shot at the buzzer to give No. 1 Oklahoma a 77-75 victory in the Big 12/SEC Challenge at the Pete Maravich Center.
With 20 seconds left coming off a timeout, Cousins dribbled the ball at the top of the key as the time ticked down under 10 seconds.
He was watching what Quarterman, guarding Hield, was going to do.
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"If he was gonna show on the screen then I was gonna throw it right back to Buddy," Cousins said. "He stayed with Buddy."
So Cousins had to do it himself.
He went left and buried the pull-up jumper, and then Lattin blocked Quarterman's shot at the buzzer on the other end to give the Sooners (18-2) the dramatic come-from-behind win.
Quarterman laid on the ground on the baseline as Oklahoma players celebrated the victory.
"I thought Tim did what he was supposed to do -- get it to the rim and give them an opportunity to make the call," LSU coach Johnny Jones said. "I haven't had a chance to go back and watch it but I thought he went in there in traffic. He didn't have the opportunity to get the ball to the rim."
The Sooners had lost in two hostile road environments this season -- Jan. 4 at Kansas and Jan. 18 at Iowa State -- and savored walking off the floor with a win in front of the sold-out LSU crowd.
"We like playing at home but it's a better feeling being able to win on the road," forward Ryan Spangler said. "So you can't beat that feeling."
Oklahoma trailed by as many as 14 early in the second half before Hield started taking over.
Hield hit seven second-half 3-pointers, scoring all of his points from behind the arc after the break.
His last came with under two minutes left, just after Antonio Blakeney's 3-pointer put the Tigers (13-8) ahead by two.
Hield finished with 32 points on 11-of-22 shooting (8 of 15 from behind the arc).
The Sooners hit 14 3-pointers in the game.
"They're pretty difficult to defend because they play so free," Quarterman said. "Every player on their starting five has a green light. When you're playing against players like that you've gotta stay locked in knowing they're gonna hit tough shots and that's what they did."
LSU seemed like it would put the game away early in the second half, jumping ahead by 14 a little more than four minutes into the half, shortly after Simmons (14 points) blew past Lattin for a reverse dunk that sent the crowd into a frenzy.
But Oklahoma limited Simmons the rest of the game.
The top freshman in the country managed just one shot from the field in the final 10 minutes and he had no second-half assists after having five before the break.
"They did a good job of trying to make sure that they got in the gaps, defensively, not allowing (us) to try to drive the ball," Jones said. "We wanted to run some high-low action to him inside there. They did a good job of trying to prevent us from getting it down in there on the post."
Cousins added 18 for the Sooners while Spangler had 16 points and 10 rebounds.
Quarterman led LSU with 18 points.
The momentum slowly turned throughout the second half until Hield seized control, thanks to a big play by a teammate on Simmons.
Spangler took a charge from Simmons on one end and then Hield buried a 3-pointer to put the Sooners within two with about 4:30 remaining.
After a stop on the other end, Hield drained another 3 to put the Sooners ahead for the first time since the game's opening minutes.
Oklahoma had relied on its 3-point shooting to carry it to the top spot in the rankings but it struggled from behind the arc early and fell behind by as many as 13 in the first half.
The Sooners were just 5 of 14 from behind the arc at halftime with Hield just 1 of 5 from deep.
Instead it was LSU that got hot from outside early, hitting seven first-half 3-pointers -- three by Quarterman.
When the Tigers took the lead nearly four minutes into the game, they didn't give it up until Hield's 3-pointer near the four-minute mark in the game.
NOTES: It was Hield's eighth 30-point performance of the season and second consecutive. ... After recording 14 blocks in their last game, a home win over Texas Tech, Oklahoma had just three Saturday. ... LSU running back Leonard Fournette was in attendance, wearing his No. 7 jersey. ... LSU plays Tuesday at Auburn. ... The Sooners return to Big 12 play Tuesday at home against TCU.
