Sooner Sports Teams Make Six ‘Final Four’ Appearances in 2015-16
By Chip Rouse
No Big 12 school was more successful in national championship competition in the 2015-16 college sports season than Sooner sports teams.
And that’s something for the Sooner Nation to stand up and shout about. It also, quite frankly, is a testament to the outstanding coaching hires and unfettered support provided to the OU athletic teams by athletic director Joe Castiglione and the University of Oklahoma administration.
The most recent of Oklahoma’s stellar sports accomplishments this academic year is less than a week old, as Patty Gasso’s young and intrepid softball team captured the school’s second national championship in four years and third overall. The Sooners are now one of just four schools to win three or more national titles in the sport of softball.
No school in the country enjoyed as much success in the two major sports of football and basketball as the Oklahoma Sooners in 2015-16.
The Sooners were one of the four teams that made the College Football Playoff in the second year of that new championship format, and the OU men’s basketball team matched the accomplishment of its gridiron brethren, advancing through the NCAA Basketball Championship and earning a coveted spot in the Final Four for the fifth time in the school’s men’s hoops history.
The Sooners are the only school to make the final four in both football and basketball this past season. Unfortunately, Oklahoma was unable to make it past the national semifinals in either national championship.
In addition to the final-four appearances in both football and men’s basketball, OU captured national championships in both men’s and women’s gymnastics, the only school to win both championships in the same season, and last week in softball.
The Sooners just missed a fourth national championship this season when the OU men’s tennis team lost in the national championship match to Virginia. It was the second consecutive year those same two teams have met for the national title.
Not to be outdone, the men’s golf team, after finishing fourth in the Big 12 championship, advanced all the way to the Elite Eight in the NCAA Men’s Golf Championship before losing to Big 12 foe and longtime-rival Texas in the opening round of match play, the final stage of the national championship format.
All told the Sooners were among the final four schools participating in six national championships this school year in five different sports.
All told, Oklahoma athletic teams finished first in the conference in four different sports in 2015-16 (football, men’s and women’s gymnastics and softball) and no lower than third place in six other sports (2nd in men’s cross country, 3rd in men’s basketball, 2nd in wrestling, 2nd in women’s outdoor track & field, 3rd in men’s tennis and 2nd in rowing).
Oklahoma ranks 18th in the current spring standings of the NCAA Division I Learfield Directors’ Cup. That’s down from No. 12 after the winter sports season, but the Sooners are sure to move up because the current spring rankings do not include OU’s national championship in softball.
Anyway you look at it, it has been a terrific sports year for the University of Oklahoma and their fans and one that will be difficult to replicate in terms of the number of legitimate national championship contenders.