Tisdale Headlines Oklahoma's All-Century Team

Saturday, February 24th 2007, 7:42 pm

By: News On 6

NORMAN, Okla. (AP) Wayman Tisdale, Oklahoma's all-time leading scorer and rebounder, was the top vote-getter on the Sooners' all-century team in fan voting announced Saturday.

Mookie Blaylock and Stacey King, teammates on Oklahoma's team that lost in the 1988 NCAA championship game, were the next two in line and joined Hollis Price and Alvan Adams in the starting lineup as the best five players in the school's first 100 years of men's basketball.

Other players selected were Harvey Grant, Garfield Heard, Darryl Kennedy, Joe King, David Little, Tim McCalister, Aaron McGhee, Ryan Minor, Eduardo Najera and Brent Price.

"I think it's always good to keep history special like it is here at Oklahoma, and keep it in front of people and keep it in their minds," athletic director Joe Castiglione said. "There are a lot of kids actually weren't alive when some of the players were competing, so they wouldn't have realized what there's been decade after decade here. That's something special."

Fans chose all 12 of the players on the team, which didn't have anyone from the school's 1939 Final four squad or its national runners-up from 1947. Joe King, who played for the Sooners from 1956-58, was the only player on the team that played in the first half-century.

Hollis Price and McGhee represented the 2002 team, which made the most recent of Oklahoma's four trips to the Final Four.

"We wanted fans to get involved with recognizing the basketball history that Oklahoma has," Castiglione said.

Oklahoma has been honoring some of its greatest players throughout the season, with Brent Price and Minor honored at halfcourt during the Sooners' 68-58 loss to No. 19 Texas on Saturday.

Castiglione said more than 100 former players attended a reunion last weekend, including some that "hadn't been back since they left, as many as 20 or 25 years." He said he hopes the former players will remain involved in the program, which is in its first year under new coach Jeff Capel.

"Most importantly it's recognizing those players and trying to link the past to the present and the future," Castiglione said.

The team includes eight of Oklahoma's top 10 scorers and all six of the school's first-round NBA draft picks -- Heard, Adams, Tisdale, Grant, Stacey King and Blaylock.

"It makes everybody realize how good of basketball players we've had for such a long time -- guys that not only took teams to Final Fours but won conference championships and lots of them went to the NBA as well," Castiglione said.