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Oklahoma Basketball: Sooners’ Five Best NCAA Tournament Years

By Chip Rouse

Mar 11, 2016; Kansas City, MO, USA; Oklahoma Sooners head coach Lon Kruger reacts to a call in the first half against the West Virginia Mountaineers during the Big 12 Conference tournament at Sprint Center. Mandatory Credit: Denny Medley-USA TODAY Sports
Mar 11, 2016; Kansas City, MO, USA; Oklahoma Sooners head coach Lon Kruger reacts to a call in the first half against the West Virginia Mountaineers during the Big 12 Conference tournament at Sprint Center. Mandatory Credit: Denny Medley-USA TODAY Sports /
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Mar 5, 2016; Fort Worth, TX, USA; Oklahoma Sooners guard Buddy Hield (center) and teammates during the game against the TCU Horned Frogs at Ed and Rae Schollmaier Arena. Mandatory Credit: Kevin Jairaj-USA TODAY Sports
Mar 5, 2016; Fort Worth, TX, USA; Oklahoma Sooners guard Buddy Hield (center) and teammates during the game against the TCU Horned Frogs at Ed and Rae Schollmaier Arena. Mandatory Credit: Kevin Jairaj-USA TODAY Sports /

Prior to the 1982-83 season, Oklahoma basketball had made just four appearances all-time in the NCCA Men’ Basketball Tournament.

In the 35 years that followed, the Sooners have been a participant in the NCAA Tournament 25 times and this year marks their 30th such appearance.

Shortly after the arrival of Billy Tubbs as the Oklahoma head basketball coach, the Sooners started to become known as more than just a football school in the landscape of major college sports. It isn’t that OU had not had good basketball teams before that time, but rather that the Sooners had never established the consistency of success on the hardwood that came about after Tubbs’ arrived in Norman.

Oklahoma mad nine trips to the NCAA Tournament in Tubbs’ 14 seasons as the Sooners’ head coach. His teams were 15-9 in those nine NCAA appearances, including two Sweet 16 teams (1897, 1989) one that advanced to the Elite Eight (1985) and one that finished as a runner-up to Kansas for the national championship (1988). Four of his Sooner teams were seeded No. 1 and one was a No. 2 seed.

Kelvin Sampson took over the Oklahoma men’s basketball reins from Tubbs in 1994 and did even better insofar as getting the Sooners to March Madness. Sampson guided the Sooners to 11 NCAA Tournament appearances in a dozen seasons, including a Sweet 16 team (1999), one that made it to the Elite Eight (2003) and one Final Four team (2002).

Lon Kruger has been in place for five seasons as the OU head coach. The former Kansas State All-Big Eight performer and head coach is the only NCAA Division I coach to take five different schools to the NCAA Tournament. He has taken four Oklahoma teams to the Big Dance, including this year’s team, which may be the best of the five he has had at OU.

The Sooners are 37-29 all-time in the NCAA Tournament, and all but nine games occurred from 1983 to the present.

Of Oklahoma’s 29 previous NCAA appearances in men’s basketball, here are the five that I consider to be the five best in terms of performance and memorability:

Next: 1987-88 Oklahoma Sooners

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