Oklahoma Basketball: Playing at Kansas Has Been House of Horrors
By Chip Rouse
Oklahoma basketball has had little if any success when playing at Kansas against the Jayhawks.
That statement is pretty much true for any team that has made annual trips to play Kansas on their home floor, which for the past 67 seasons has been spacious and historic Allen Field House.
Oklahoma has lost its last 15 games at Allen Field House and has won there just seven times in 53 total games played there since the building opened in March 1955. Several of the games OU lost there have been by one, two and three points, but they were still losses, which has been the Sooners fate 87 percent of the time they have played in the house named after the winningest coach in Jayhawk basketball history (Phog Allen).
The Sooners have had more success against Kansas in games played in Norman, but even there the Jayhawks own a 50-42 series advantage. Interestingly, the largest winning margin OU 123, Kansas 95) as well as the biggest margin of defeat (Kansas 86, Oklahoma 55) occurred in OU home games.
Under current Jayhawk head coach Bill Self, Kansas is 220-10 in games at Allen Field House. That’s an incredible winning percentage of .955. The Jayhawks are 758-110 all-time in the house Phog helped build and Wilt (Chamberlain) filled, a winning percentage of .873.
Kansas is 14-1 at home this season. The lone loss, to Iowa State earlier this month, broke a consecutive-game home win streak that had reached 59 games, the equivalent of four full seasons.
The bottom line is: It is an extremely rare occurrence when Kansas loses a game on its home hardwood. No team that has played 75 or more games at Kansas has won fewer times – or, to put it another way, has lost more games – than Oklahoma.
And if winning a game at Allen Field House isn’t difficult enough at any time during the season, knocking off the home team there in its final home game of the season, on Senior Night and on the same day on which Kansas was elevated to the No. 1 spot in the nation and just two days after capturing its 13th consecutive Big 12 championships, probably falls into the category of next to impossible.
If Kansas’ winning record at home isn’t scary enough, how about playing in front of 16,000 frenetic Kansas fans who, eat, sleep and breathe Jayhawk basketball in a building that the Guinness Book of Records officially certified a couple of Mondays ago as the loudest indoor sports venue.
The Jayhawks have won 33 consecutive home regular-season finales.
Oklahoma definitely has its work cut out for it on Monday night in Lawrence.