Arkansas hangs on as No. 15 Oral Roberts misses a three-pointer at the buzzer

It felt familiar. It felt almost nostalgic after a March 2020 that lacked this lunacy. It felt mad. There with the ball in a burst went Max Abmas, who played all 245 minutes of the six postseason games of Oral Roberts’s mind-bending run, and there he stopped-and-popped on the right wing just beyond the arc to let go of a shot that looked plenty plausible.

“When it left my hands, it felt good,” he would say, but as the clock ran out and the nerve endings of all of the Arkansans in Bankers Life Fieldhouse frayed and the red lights around the backboard came on and the ball reached the rim, it smacked the thing and caromed away, the score coming to rest at that 72-70.

No, the Elite Eight would not allow in the grand oddity of a No. 15 seed for the first time, would not include only the second No. 15 seed to reach the Sweet 16 (after Florida Gulf Coast in 2013), would not have the first No. 15 seed to throw such a scare so late in the brackets. It would not boast an Oral Roberts that finished fourth in the Summit League before a mad surge through some rugged Dakotan teams in the conference tournament, then No. 2 seed Ohio State and No. 7 seed Florida in the biggie here. Instead, it would have No. 3 seed Arkansas following its escape by trying to solve No. 1 seed Baylor, a match that looks like some old meeting of the late Southwest Conference (1914-96), where people used to sit around a basketball game talking football recruiting.

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“I mean, it’s a dream come true,” said Arkansas freshman Davonte Davis, whose 12-footer from the right of the top of the key with three seconds left might live in Hogs lore for good. “I’ve never thought of something like this.” He later added: “I can’t explain it. It’s wild.”

Oh, it was wild, all right, including that moment when the score stood 70-70 with 31 seconds left and Arkansas’ Jalen Tate dribbled and dribbled and dribbled on the left side, then ventured toward the lane and zipped a pass to Davis.

“He’s a shot-creator, and for a freshman, that’s a big thing to ask,” said Eric Musselman, the Razorbacks’ second-year head coach. Just one year after the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette state male player of the year had to see his Jacksonville High state title go shared because of the coronavirus, he stepped around some tough traffic to his left for a tough shot from the right with 3.1 seconds left.

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Right then, it looked like Arkansas (25-6) had weathered a whole list of problems, from Oral Roberts’s 46-34 lead with 15:26 left, to Abmas’s 25 points that followed on his 29 against Ohio State and 26 against Florida, to the easy layups of an opponent that kept cutting and passing to get them. It looked like the Hogs had done just enough with their swarms of offensive rebounding, an 18-6 advantage that resembled the 24-7 advantage that helped them beat Oral Roberts, 87-76, from 12 points behind Dec. 20. It appeared as though their committee of offense that shot only 37.7 percent had mustered an eke-out through 22 points and four assists from Tate, 16 points and eight rebounds from Davis, 12 points and a marvelous 14 rebounds (11 on offense) from Justin Smith, and 14 points and six rebounds from Moses Moody.

And it looked as though their tack against Oral Roberts’s other point-gusher, Kevin Obanor, had worked, with Obanor squeezing out only seven shots and 12 points.

“We just thought there was no way we were gonna let 3 and 0 both have big games,” Musselman said. Finally, it looked like the truth when Musselman said, “We’ve been a really, really good second-half team all year,” his team having overcome a 14-point deficit against Colgate, a 10-point deficit against Texas Tech and now this.

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The evening of the Hogs’ hard chasing from 12 back to 66-62 up to 69-68 back to 72-70 up would end up with Oral Roberts Coach Paul Mills fielding a question about how he would look back on this riot of a run and saying: “Yeah, I don’t know that answer. I’m proud, but you always think that you’re capable of so much more. . . . You always think a shot here, a shot there, if Coach Mills doesn’t get a technical foul [in the first half] . . .”

But before all that could go cemented, there had to come one last shot, and as that thing went through the air, the whole thing felt fantastically mad.