Oklahoma Basketball: Postseason No-Shows a Rarity for Sooners
By Chip Rouse
Since the Big 12 came into being, Oklahoma basketball has been an automatic most years as a participant in both the men’s and women’s NCAA Basketball Tournament.
The OU women have been a permanent fixture in March Madness going back now 18 consecutive seasons. The men haven’t been quite that consistent. From 1995 to 2009, however, a span of 15 years, the Oklahoma men were no-shows in the NCAA Tournament just twice.
In six season under head coach Lon Kruger, who is one of only two Division I coaches to take five different schools to the NCAA Tournament, Oklahoma has been part of March Madness four times, including an appearance in the Final Four a year ago.
Billy Tubbs, the winningest of the 14 OU men’s head coaches in over 100 years of Sooner varsity basketball, took nine Oklahoma teams to the NCAA Championship Tournament, eight of them consecutively (1983-90). He also took one of his teams to the National Invitation Tournament (1990-91).
One of Tubbs’ NCAA Tournament teams made it to the Final Four championship game (in 1988, losing to Kansas, 83-79), one to the Elite Eight (1985 with Wayman Tisdale) and two (1987 and 1989) to the Sweet Sixteen.
Kelvin Sampson coached 12 Oklahoma teams. Eleven of those teams made NCAA Tournament appearances and one (2004) went to the NIT. Sampson’s 2001-02 team joined Kansas in the Final Four (both teams lost in their semifinal games, thus preventing a rematch of the 1988 national championship game). The following years, the Sooners advanced to the Elite Eight, losing in the East Regional championship game to Syracuse.
Before the Tubbs era began in 1980-81, Oklahoma had appeared a total of just four times in the NCAA Tournament. Two of those four were Final Four appearances (in 1939 and 1947).
Since 1983, the Oklahoma men have received NCAA Tournament bids in 26 of the past 33 seasons.
The Sooner men’s team has been a No. 1 seed five times (1985, 1988, 1989, 1990 and 2003) and a No. 2 seed four times (1984, 2002, 2009 and 2016). In 1990, Oklahoma was ranked No. 1 and the overall No. 1 seed in the tournament (the Sooners lost to No. 8 seed North Carolina in the second round that year).