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OU women's basketball: No. 6 Sooners escape close call with Belmont

headshotby: George Stoia18 hours agoGeorgeStoia
OU Aaliyah Chavez
Oklahoma guard Aaliyah Chavez (2) works up court in the second quarter during an NCAA Women’s basketball game between the Oklahoma Sooners and the Belmont Bruins at Lloyd Noble Center in Norman, Okla., on Monday, Nov. 3, 2025.

No. 6 OU struggled in its season opener on Monday.

The Sooners beat Belmont 84-67. But it wasn’t pretty. Oklahoma started the game on a 13-0 run, but Belmont roared back to only trail by 12 at halftime. And in the third quarter, Belmont went on a 20-5 run to take its first lead of the game. Thanks to senior Raegan Beers, OU finished the game strong, outscoring Belmont 26-13 in the fourth quarter.

“We took a lot of things away today,” coach Jennie Baranczyk said. “We took some good things, we took some other things. And this is a team when we continue to lock in and play at our best, we’re going to be pretty good. I think our leaders are going to have to know they’re going to have to play really well every game.”

Beers led all scorers with 29 points and 10 rebounds. Freshman Aaliyah Chavez struggled shooting in her Sooners debut, going 5 of 18 from the field and 1 of 8 from 3. She finished with 15 points, five rebounds and five assists. Senior Payton Verhulst and junior Sahara Williams also each added 11 points.

“Jennie talked about winning every minute, winning every possession, and I thought in that fourth quarter we really locked in,” Williams said. “I thought we just capitalized on every possession. We stopped checking the scoreboard. If you take the scoreboard out of it and you just check off one possession at a time, the scoreboard will tell itself.”

As a team, OU was abysmal from 3 and the free-throw line. The Sooners finished 3 of 23 (13%) from beyond the arc and 13 of 28 from the free-throw line. Meanwhile, Belmont shot 29.4% from 3 and 50% from the free-throw line.

“I do think we got a little 3-happy when there was obviously something we were looking for,” Baranczyk said. “But I think the big lesson is if we guard better, it turns into point. Because when we play together, that’s where your assists come, where your shots come… Once we started to guard better — you could kind of see that shift.”

OU will look to improve quickly, facing No. 3 UCLA in Sacramento on Nov. 10.

“People want to watch really good teams play each other,” Baranczyk said of playing UCLA early in the season. “That’s something we don’t shy away from.”

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