Oklahoma Basketball: ‘Bracketology’ Has Sooners as a 2017 No. 4 Seed
By Chip Rouse
With three Sooner starters moving on, there is some question about how the Oklahoma basketball squad will respond to its new look among the starting five come next season.
Losing more than 60 percent of its offensive production and the national player of the year, there is little question that the Oklahoma men’s team is going to have to retool for the 2016-17 season.
With perhaps his best recruiting class in his five seasons at OU coming in and with Lon Kruger’s long history of building winning programs, there is good reason for optimism, even though no one expects as good a year as his Sooners enjoyed this past season. when they advanced to their fourth Final Four in school history.
The “Way Too Early” forecasters for next season have signaled their faith in Kruger and the Sooners fielding another highly competitive bunch next season, projecting another top-25 preseason ranking, although down about 10 spots from where they began in 2015-16. If you believe what the analysts are saying at the present time, look for the Buddy Hield-less Oklahoma team to start next season in the back half of the second ten, around No. 18 or 19.
As long as we’re talking about college basketball a year out, it’s probably not too early either to project the NCAA Tournament field for next March. And it appears that it’s never too early for ESPN’s Joe Lunardi, who has made the term “Bracketology” into an official part of the sports lexicon.
If you thought “Bracketology” – the universal language for projecting the NCAA Basketball Tournament field as well as the potential seeding of the teams who are expected to be in the three-week March circus that tops off the college basketball season every year, was something that takes place only during the season, you would be wrong.
The ink on the printed t-shirts won by the 2016 national champion Villanova Wildcats – yes, the same team that ran roughshod over Oklahoma in the national semifinals just two days before – after there dramatic victory over North Carolina Tar Heels was barely dry when Lunardi came out with his projections for next year’s Big Dance.
The resident ESPN Bracketology czar has the Sooners as a No. 4 seed, which is another way of saying he believes OU will be one of the top-16 teams in the 2017 tournament field. Who does he predict will be the four No. 1 seeds in next year’s tournament: How about Duke, Kansas, Kentucky and this year’s champion, Villanova?
Here is how Lunardi projects the other top-four seedings for next year: No. 2: Oregon, Arizona, Michigan State and Virginia. No. 3: Xavier, Louisville, West Virginia and North Carolina. No. 4: Oklahoma, Wisconsin, Seton Hall and Indiana.
Kruger has taken the Sooners to four consecutive NCAA Tournament appearances. OU fans are optimistic that string will continue. Based on what some of the experts are saying, they have good reason to feel that way.