Feb. 21—Oklahoma seemed destined to be headed for another close finish in a onescore game midway through the second half of Tuesday’s game against Texas Tech.

In a battle of two teams ranked among the bottom three in the Big 12 standings, the Sooners were struggling to keep up amid a tough shooting night against a Red Raider squad that was dealing with its own offensive struggles.

Coming out of a timeout, the Sooners found Milos Uzan open in the corner for a 3-pointer to cut a six-point deficit down to three.

Then, like a switch went off inside the Lloyd Noble Center, the Sooners went cold on both ends of the court.

The Sooners would slowly watch a two-possession game turn into a seven-point deficit with just over a minute remaining. With Oklahoma desperately looking for a turnover, the Red Raiders found wide open space behind the Sooners’ defense for a game-sealing dunk.

The 74-63 loss gives the Sooners two-straight and six in their last seven since knocking off No. 2 Alabama.

“They do a good job,” OU head coach Porter Moser said. “They were just completely packing the paint and they rotate so much. You weren’t getting much, they were daring you to shoot.”

The Sooners took a seasonhigh 33 3-pointers on Tuesday, six more than their previous season high, which also came against Texas Tech. They only knocked down nine of those attempts to shoot a lowly 27% from behind the arc in the game.

“When we beat them here last time we had 13 three’s,” Moser said. “I think when we beat them there we had (nine) three’s. We knew we were going to have to knock down some shots. Not to the extent where they just didn’t play a couple of guys, but I thought for the most part we had some good looks.”

The Red Raiders were led by a constant paint presence in Fardaws Aimaq, who finished with a game-high 19 points on nine of 15 shooting and 10 rebounds. OU redshirt senior Tanner Groves led the Sooners in scoring despite having a tough matchup against the 6-11 forward.

Groves scored 16 points on five of seven shooting and had two makes from behind the arc.

The Sooners were outrebounded 38-22 and were out-scored in the paint 40-24.

“I’d love to do what a lot of teams in this league do which is switch one through five, but we’re not able to do that,” Moser said. “I think when he rolls you have to cover the hole and I thought we were covering the hole well pretty much until the last four minutes. We had a guy that hasn’t played many minutes that missed his assignment and all the sudden they got loose there.”

Oklahoma will look to put an end to its losing streak when it travels to face Iowa State on Saturday at 11 a.m.

Cortez releases statement on recent absence Sophomore guard Bijan Cortes announced on Twitter on Tuesday that he will be “taking some time away from basketball” due to personal reasons. The Kingfisher native appeared in 26 games and had one start this season.