Jennie Baranczyk finally reaches Sweet 16, as OU throtles Iowa

Four years ago, Jennie Baranczyk had her first crack at reaching the Sweet 16 as the head coach at Oklahoma.

Baranczyk and her Sooners were a No. 4 seed in the 2022 NCAA Tournament, hosting a regional in Norman. But OU wasn’t ready for the moment that season, getting blown out 108-64 by Notre Dame on its home court.

Fast forward four years. Baranczyk and OU have turned the tables, advancing to the Sweet 16 for the first time since 2013 after the third-seeded Sooners beat sixth-seeded Iowa 96-62 at the Lloyd Noble Center on Monday.

“I don’t know if I can go down reflective mode quite yet,” Baranczyk said after the game. “But I do know that when they’re talking, it makes me smile because that’s why they played today. I think we have tried to play to prove a lot. That we’re better than we were, or we try to prove that we’re good enough, or we belong in the SEC, or that we were Big 12 champs. We’ve got to prove that constantly. We’ve got to prove I can be a starter or a nonstarter or a player of the year. You have all these things that I think sometimes are just human nature things.

“Today’s, I think, one of those validation points when you play for joy and play together look at what happens. That’s what we want this program to be all about is you play — everyone says play for the front of your jersey but it’s deeper than that.”

OU won on Monday thanks to big performances from Raegan Beers, Payton Verhulst, Skylar Vann and Sahara Williams.

After scoring only two points in the first half, Beers finished with 11 points and 13 rebounds. Verhuslt and Vann also both had only two points in the first half but finished with 16 and 17 points, respectively. But maybe Oklahoma’s best player on Monday was Williams, who finished with 13 points, 9 rebounds and 4 assists.

“We’ve been on the other side of the coin. And it’s not a fun feeling,” Williams said. “Just Jennie and Skylar and all 13 of the other girls, our staff have just poured in, and in the offseason getting better. That was my goal this offseason, making a deep run and doing everything I could to win. And I think it showed today.

“This was just a day you can’t take for granted. I thought we all seized the moment, and I thought it was awesome to go out there and play.”

Baranczyk’s team was dominant in the second half, after taking an 11-point lead at halftime. The Sooners outscored Iowa 58-35 in the final 20 minutes. That included an 11-0 run in the third quarter.

For OU, it was a team effort. The Sooners had six players in double figures and 11 different players score. Oklahoma also dominated on the boards, totaling 64 rebounds to Iowa’s 33.

“We’re hard to guard,” Vann said. “When you have — if you look at the stats, I mean, we have multiple scorers today. To have that, that’s how connected we were. We were giving each other the ball. We were really being aggressive on offense and defense, getting rebounds, getting second opportunities to score. When we do those things, when we’re so connected that nothing else matters, we’re a great team, and we’re hard to beat.”

OU will face the winner of UCONN and South Dakota State on Saturday in Spokane, Washington. If the Sooners face the No. 2 seeded Huskies, they will likely be big underdogs.

But Baranczyk isn’t afraid. She never has been as Oklahoma’s head coach. She believes this team isn’t done yet. And the program is just getting started.

“I don’t think we’re done yet,” Baranczyk said. “We obviously get another game. And we get another opportunity to play an incredible basketball game in the Sweet 16. We haven’t done that. Here’s another big moment. So I’m excited to see us continue to respond. Are we going to take that joy in or go back and be, like, the moment’s big? So it will be fun to be able to see, but the journey is not over, which is awesome.”

The crowd

One of the biggest factors in Monday’s win was the crowd.

Sooner nation showed up for Baranczyk’s team, despite the game tipping off at 3 p.m. on a Monday. The attendance was 8,138. That included hundreds of OU students, including nearly the entire football team. In 2022, the attendance for the Notre Dame game in the Round of 32 was only 3,258.

“Sooner Nation came out and we could not thank them more,” Vann said. “Jennie talked about it in the locker room, from the first year we hosted to now, it’s insane to see. So my four years playing with Jennie, playing five years here, just seeing the crowd grow and grow, Jennie promised that our first year, that we were going to get this crowd going. And my senior year we did. And I couldn’t thank Sooner Nation more. They helped us get that win today, no doubt.”

Finally sweet

Baranczyk never made the Sweet 16 in her four years as a player at Iowa. She also never made it in her nine years as the head coach. And until Monday, she had never reached the second weekend as Oklahoma’s head coach.

For her, Monday’s win was special. But she’s also looking forward to seeing how far her team can go.

“I think it’s been a long time,” Baranczyk said. “So it’s a pretty sweet feeling — and I didn’t mean to have that pun in there. But again, I’m just excited that this team gets to keep playing. I thought it would feel different. You think, oh, it’s going to be amazing once you get past and you’re in the Sweet 16, and obviously we’re not in Spokane yet.

“I love this team. I love coaching this team. I love the lessons that we continue to learn, and they’ve been hard lessons and it’s not always sunshine and rainbows, but that’s what makes it so beautiful and amazing, and they test you every day, and we all mess up. We all get up and keep going. I’m so glad that we get another day together.”