Not that it’s much comfort, but OU basketball has company among the top teams that are going through rough water right now.
Since ascending to the top ranking in college basketball, the Sooners have lost three of their last four games. Even then, their drop in the national rankings has been slight.
Oklahoma still stood at No. 3 in this week’s Associated Press Top 25, but that was before the court-storming upset by Texas Tech on Wednesday night, which should knock the Sooners further down the ladder of elite teams this season.
They say misery loves company, and it has been another miserable week for the top teams in college basketball, the Crimson and Cream included.
While the 3rd-ranked Sooners have come up short in back-to-back games, the three teams immediately behind them in the AP rankings – Iowa, North Carolina and Maryland – are experiencing troubles of their own. Iowa has lost two of its previous three, North Carolina is 3-2 in its last five games, including a crushing one-point home loss to Duke on Wednesday, and Maryland, like the Sooners, have hit a two-game skid.
Normally, a team that losses three out of four games, like the swooning Sooners, would fall like a rock in the national rankings, but the experts and poll voters still have positive expectations of Oklahoma going forward.
Joe Lunardi, the ESPN “Bracketology” czar, still has the Sooners in a projected No. 1 slot for the NCAA Tournament. Lunardi’s latest tournament field bracket and seedings has Villanova, Kansas, Virginia and Oklahoma as the top seeds, as of Feb. 18, which was the day after the OU loss on Wednesday at Texas Tech.
And if that boggles your mind, consider this: The Sooners are No. 4 in the most recent ESPN College Basketball Power Index, which attempts to go beyond wins and losses and projects out how powerful a team is going forward. The latest ESPN BPI was published on Feb. 19.
West Virginia, Oklahoma’s opponent on Saturday and in second-place in the Big 1 standings, is ranked No. 9 in the BPI, and Big 12 leader Kansas is No. 11. Go figure.