KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- Blake Griffin was cool, as always.

His mom, Gail, was a little unnerved.

Oklahoma coach Jeff Capel was downright mad Friday -- and getting madder -- about the judo-style takedown of his star power forward in the Sooners' first-round NCAA tournament win over Morgan State a night earlier.

"It was awful. Blake was very fortunate. Very, very fortunate," Capel said of the much-reviewed and talked-about play in which Griffin and Morgan's Ameer Ali became entangled while going for a rebound and the 6-4, 230-pound Ali flipped Griffin over his back and onto the Sprint Center floor. The Bears' freshman was immediately ejected.

Griffin bruised his tailbone but was otherwise uninjured.

The incident punctuated a second half that saw Morgan State -- like a number of previous OU opponents -- choose to play rough with college basketball's likely player of the year. Ali and Griffin traded bumps, shoves and occasional stares, and Morgan State's Reggie Holmes appeared to make a grab at Griffin while coming down on another rebound try after Ali had been thrown out.

Griffin and second-seeded Oklahoma nonetheless rolled to an 82-54 victory that sent them into a second-round South Region game against No. 10-seeded Michigan on Saturday.

Capel caught a replay of the throw-down in OU's postgame locker room. "It just made me more angry," he said. "That doesn't need to be in our game, college basketball, plays like that. One of the things it could do is make the really elite players not want to be in college long for fear of getting hurt.

"I had an opportunity when I played (at Duke) to play against some elite players, and I don't think they went through anything like that -- (Tim) Duncan getting hit like that or taken down like that or (Antawn) Jamieson or (Stephon) Marbury or those guys. . . . It's just frustrating to see it happen to a kid (when) he's everything that's right about college basketball."

Griffin shrugged. The mano-a-mano tactics have become all too routine for him.

Southern California's Leonard Washington elbowed him in the groin and was ejected from what turned out to be a one-point Oklahoma victory in early December. Utah's Luke Drca tripped Griffin as he and the Sooners were fast-breaking up the court, and drew a technical foul from officials, and subsequent two-game suspension from his coach. Oklahoma State forward Malcoln gave Griffin a slap to the head, also drawing a technical, and got in a later intentional foul for good measure.

That's not counting the inadvertent stuff like the elbow to the face against Rice that resulted in six stitches beneath Griffin's right eye. Or the simultaneous blows by two Texas players to his nose and head, leaving Griffin with a concussion and the Sooners with a couple of losses when he sat out the rest of that game and the next against Kansas.

"I'm a physical player. That's kind of my game, and I think that might be some of it," Griffin said Friday. "Every once in awhile, things happen in the heat of the moment."

Capel buys that -- to a point.

"If you're out there trying your butt off and a guy's still scoring on you, the guy's still making it look easy, that can be frustrating," he said. "I guarded some guys like that. It was frustrating.

"I never flipped them over, though."

Beyond foul trouble, there has been little slowing Griffin this season. The 6-10, 251-pound sophomore is shooting 64.3% from the field and averaging 22.1 points and 14.3 rebounds.

He has failed to produce a double-double only five times. The first was the USC game, in which he briefly went to the bench after the cheap-shot blow below his belt. Three others, he finished with four fouls. The fifth was the Texas game in which he played just 11 minutes.

Searching for a comparatively difficult defensive assignment, Michigan coach John Beilein pointed to Carmelo Anthony when Belein was at West Virginia and 'Melo at Syracuse.

"We devised a great game plan," Beilein said, "and then he just basically destroyed our game plan because he'd get himself into leverage positions and all of a sudden it difficult to stop him one-on-one.

"You can't stop some young men when they're that talented. We're going to try, though. We're certainly going to try."

It may be interesting. The Wolverines start just a single player taller than 6-5.

"The individual on him has got to be very tough," Beilein said, "and then you've got to play great defense around him."

Griffin reported only a little soreness in his tailbone in the wake of his Thursday night fall. Nothing unusual, he said.

His mom took some convincing of that. "She was pretty upset," Griffin said. "But we calmed her down a little bit so she'll be all right 'til the next game."