Inside Tulsa’s first ranked win, from Mady Cartwright’s declaration to one last stop

Mady Cartwright had already made the two free throws Tulsa needed to get to overtime when she sat down on the bench. Angie Nelp remembers her being the first one to speak.

“We are winning this game,” Cartwright said, according to Nelp.

Jade Clack opened overtime with a three. Dora Toman hit one, too, and then Cartwright made one of her own. Tulsa went up seven. By the time Audi Crooks tied it at 62 with 1:06 to play, the Golden Hurricane had already made their last field goal of the night.

So Tulsa found another way to make Cartwright right. Alexa Kinas hit two free throws with 36 seconds left and Oklahoma State didn’t score again. Tulsa beat the No. 19 Cowgirls 64-62 on Thursday at the Reynolds Center, the program’s first win over a ranked opponent.

Oklahoma State head coach Jacie Hoyt said in her press conference that the Cowgirls have a target on their back. Tulsa hit the bullseye.

The week between Incarnate Word and Oklahoma State

Nine days earlier, Tulsa had lost its opener at home to Incarnate Word. Nelp said her team let the physicality of that game bother them, so the Golden Hurricane spent the next week working on how to handle contact. Tulsa had another reminder of what could happen against a team that sped them up. Oklahoma State had forced 31 turnovers in a 90-58 win over the Golden Hurricane in Stillwater last December.

There were still 21 Tulsa turnovers Thursday. The difference was what the Cowgirls were able to do with them. Oklahoma State scored 16 points off those turnovers after getting 33 last year and Tulsa held the Cowgirls to eight points in the second quarter.

Nelp went with a zone. Oklahoma State still got 17 points from Crooks, nine assists from Liv McGill and 15 rebounds from Stailee Heard. Heard had 11 of those by halftime.

As Oklahoma State moved the ball and sent cutters through the zone, Nelp said her players kept communicating – something Nelp said was key. The Cowgirls shot 33% from the floor and 17% from three. That communication mattered even more in the last 30 seconds, when Tulsa kept finding itself back on defense with only a two-point advantage.

“Sometimes it’s like, ‘Okay, we’re still on defense,’” Nelp told On3. “And they were still locked in and focused with it.”

The voice on the bench

Nelp and Cartwright have a running joke about replay reviews. Cartwright asks for them often enough that Nelp knows the line by heart.

“Review it, review it, review it,” Nelp recalled. She tells Cartwright she trusts her. Cartwright’s answer, the way Nelp tells it, is simply a quick “yeah, yeah, yeah.”

Nelp has coached her through her career at Tulsa. She’s seen Cartwright want those moments since she was a freshman. Now she gets to see what it does for everyone else when Cartwright says what she thinks is going to happen.

“She has a confidence about her that just kind of filters into our whole team,” Nelp said.

Cartwright finished with a team-high 17 points. Alisha Peavy had 12 points and 11 rebounds. Toman scored five of her 10 in overtime. Kinas, a transfer from Loyola Chicago, had missed three free throws before she stepped to the line for the last two, finishing with nine points, four rebounds and four steals.

When Nelp talked about why several key players came back this season, she said they felt like they had unfinished business. She thought about those overtime shots on Thursday night and what a player hears when the ball finds her on the perimeter.

“It’s one thing to catch and shoot an open three,” Nelp said. “It’s another thing to catch it and have your teammates yelling at you to shoot it because they all believe in you.”