Why I got 5 hours of sleep last night...

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In case you missed it, OSU played a 3OT thriller with Texas last night at Gallagher-Iba. They finally sealed it when Mario Boggan - who simply refused to lose the game - hit a 3-pointer with OSU down one and less than 10 seconds to go (in the 3rd OT) with 2 guys on him. By the way, he shoots 15% from beyond the arc, so this was no John Lucas moment, it wasn't even the shot Sean Sutton wanted in that moment.

Highlights included Byron Eaton (pronounced E-taun) heaving a one hander from the time line (literally) as the shot clock expired. This managed to be ESPN's top play for Tuesday and was a big momentum changer (Texas was up 7 right after half on a 9-0 run when he hit the shot to bring OSU to within 4, I don't think OSU ever fell further than 4 behind again).

Texas has a freshman phenom that scored 37 and grabbed 12 boards and nearly finished OSU off a couple of times. Credit Boggan and Curry (who has been shaky at times and still has work to do) for refusing to lose on the home court. There were a couple of moments when I would have loved to see what the dB meter was reading, I'm sure it was deafening.

One of the pictures included shows former walk-on Tyler Hatch, who ended up playing 35 minutes last night, scoring and getting fouled. He was 0-3 at the line, any of which would have ended the game sooner, but this bucket was huge because it forced Texas to at least act like they were going to guard him. Up to that point Texas used their 5th guy to chase Boggan and generally create all sorts of problems in the paint. I'm not a fan of Hatch, or at least to this point I thought he needed to stay on the bench with the other walk-ons. However, he played good defense and rebounded well last night and provided OSU enough quality minutes to get a much needed win.

One last note, OSU played those three OTs with only 5 men. They used only 7 in the game, but Eaton and Dove fouled out late in the game (actually, Eaton might have made it into the first minute of OT, I can't remember) leaving just 5 to play the last 14-15 minutes. I thought a couple of times Sutton (who commentators thought was fainting during timeouts, turns out he hurt his back falling on the ice on Monday) might go to the bench for Bowman or Cooper, but he didn't. All I can say is it was a gutty performance by Boggan, Curry, Monds (who should never shoot outside the paint again), Harris, and yes, even Hatch. They looked terrible at times, nearly giving the game away repeatedly, but somehow managed to overcome it all and get a win they'll talk about in Stillwater for a while. I only hope this is the kind of big win that will send them on a run through Big 12 play.