Live Updates: No. 13 Texas 91, No. 12 Oklahoma State 86 — Final

No. 13 Texas took an unconventional path to get to the title game of the Phillips 66 Big 12 Championship, but head coach Shaka Smart and the Longhorns are going to take the court at the T-Mobile Center in Kansas City, Mo. looking to cash in on an opportunity to win the program’s first conference tournament title since 1995. To get the job done and become the first team from the Lone State State to win the Big 12 Tournament since the inception of the conference, Texas (18-7) has to get by No. 12 Oklahoma State (20-7), one of the hottest clubs in the country with head coach Mike Boynton and the Cowboys winning seven of their last eight games, including Friday’s semifinal victory over No. 2-ranked and top-seeded Baylor, 83-74.

The Longhorns didn’t play a semifinal on Friday. Their scheduled meeting with No. 11 Kansas was canceled “due to a positive test, subsequent quarantining, and contact tracing within the” Jayhawks program, Big 12 officials said in a statement, which put Texas into the conference championship game for the first time since 2011.

The Longhorns and Oklahoma State split their two regular-season meetings with each team winning on their home floor (Texas beat the Cowboys at the Erwin Center on Dec. 20, 77-74, while Oklahoma State turned the Longhorns back in double overtime in Stillwater on Feb. 6, 75-67), making for good theater on Saturday with a neutral site as the backdrop for the rubber match. Cade Cunningham, the Big 12 Player of the Year and the projected No. 1 overall pick in the 2021 NBA Draft, has been outstanding in the tournament through two games, pacing the Cowboys with 42 points, 16 rebounds, nine assists and three steals in wins over No. 10 West Virginia and Baylor, the sixth win for Oklahoma State over an opponent ranked in the Associated Press Top 25 in the last 19 days (UConn’s six wins over ranked opponents in 18 days in 2011 is only stretch in college basketball history topping the run the Cowboys have put together).

It’s the dynamic diaper dandy for Oklahoma State battling a veteran Texas squad, which got 19 points from third-team All-Big 12 guard Matt Coleman in Thursday’s quarterfinal win over Texas Tech. Coleman’s final two points, a pair of free throws with 1.8 seconds to play, helped the Longhorns avoid a third loss on the season to the Red Raiders.

Getting by Texas Tech put Texas into the championship game with a chance to get over the hump for the first time in program history (0-6 in Big 12 title games previously). Horns247 will be following the action and will provide live updates as the Longhorns try and gain the Big 12’s automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament for the first time.