The Loudest GIA Has Ever Been

It was a game Eddie Sutton called, “the most important game I’ve ever coached.” Quin Snyder coached one side, Sutton the other. It was February 5, 2001. Just a week after the plane went down in Colorado. OSU won because it had to. No other outcome was possible.

“We did have to come out and win this game,” said Andre Williams. “Losing never crossed my mind. It was like, we win or we win. We came out and got it done.”

Sutton went on to say, “it would have been devastating not to win. I know how much it meant to so many people.”

A lot of his players echoed that to Mark Cooper in a Tulsa World story he did today.

“I’ve never played a basketball game like that,” Victor Williams told the Tulsa World.”I’ve never played a basketball game where I felt so responsible for other people. And that’s what made that game so different.”

“I was emotional,” Sutton said 15 years ago. “I got in the dressing room and I think a lot of us were emotional. I don’t think I was the only one who shed a tear.” No, he wasn’t. The Big Swede, Fred Jonzen, said it was the biggest roller coaster of his life.

“I haven’t had any other thought in my mind except that we were going to win tonight. This past week has probably been one of the toughest times in my life, if not the worst,” Jonzen said. “And tonight was probably the best time of my life.”

The best of times. The worst of times. And maybe the greatest moment in the history of this 78-year-old building (this was TC’s only bucket of the game).

One student told Cooper it was, “literally the loudest moment I’ve ever heard in Gallagher.”