Oklahoma Basketball: Which Big 12 Team Should OU Pull for in NCAA Sweet 16?
By Chip Rouse
This is the most exciting time of the college basketball season for the teams that are still playing, but for the outsiders looking in, like fans of men’s Oklahoma basketball this month, about all that is happening right now is a postmortem on what went wrong in 2016-17 and how to grow from it and make things better next year.
While the Sooners would have liked nothing better than making a fifth consecutive trip to the NCAA Tournament or, at the very least, a consolation prize invite to the next best thing, the NIT – which some say stands for Not Invited Tournament – their 11-20 season record and ninth-place finish in the Big 12 has Lon Kruger’s team and their fans relegated to the sidelines watching other schools go through the ups and downs in quest of that one shining moment and moving on to play another day.
Three Big 12 team remain in the national championship hunt as the second weekend of the tournament commences on Thursday night in two regional locations. No. 1 seed Kansas, third-seeded Baylor and fourth-seeded West Virginia advanced to the round of 16 with a couple of wins each last weekend.
With the top two seeds in the East Region, overall No. 1 seed Villanova and No. 2 Duke eliminated last weekend, Baylor appears to have the least difficult path to the Final Four. Although many would probably argue that the Big 12 champion Jayhawks are in the cat bird’s seat as well, with the Midwest Region’s No. 2 seed, Louisville, now gone from the field.
West Virginia, the lowest seeded of the remaining Big 12 schools in the Sweet 16, must go through the West’s top seed, Gonzaga on Thursday and likely No. 2 Arizona on Saturday if the Mountaineers are to make it to Phoenix and the Final Four. A very tall order, indeed.
Practically speaking, the Sooners are rooting for all the Big 12 teams out of pride and loyalty for the Big 12, but which one are they a bigger fan of if they had to choose just one to throw their full support behind?
Of the three teams from the Big 12 still dancing in the 2017 edition of March Madness, Oklahoma defeated just one of them in the regular season. The Sooners upset West Virginia in double overtime at West Virginia with an improbable comeback from 15 points down in the second half. They later lost to the Mountaineers in Norman.
The OU men did not fare as well against Kansas or Baylor, although they played both the Jayhawks and the Bears surprisingly close in the game away from Norman.
The Jayhawks are the only team among those schools currently in the Big 12 that the Sooner men have a losing record against all-time. Kansas leads the all-time series 146-66, including a 49-42 record against Oklahoma in Norman. In fact, the Sooners have won just three times in the last 20 games against the perennial Big 12 champions, now one title away from tying the great UCLA teams of the 1960s and ’70s with an incredulous 14 consecutive conference championships. regular-season title.
The first of those 13 league crown’s captured by the Jayhawks was actually shared with Oklahoma, which has won three Big 12 Tournament championships to go along with the one
Kansas has been the longtime face of Big 12 basketball, with 14 Big Eight regular-season championships and 17 more in 21 Big 12 seasons.
The Sooners have been to three Final Fours over the last 29 seasons, and the Jayhawks were among the Final Four participants in two of OU’s three appearances over that time.
In the 1988 NCAA Basketball Tournament, arguably the best Oklahoma team in history and a heavy favorite to defeat a No. 6-seeded Kansas team in the national championship game, lost to the Jayhawks and the team later referred to as Danny (Manning) and the Miracles.
That may have been the Sooners’ best chance to date to win a national title in basketball, but on that particular day in April 1988 in Kansas City, Mo., a mere half-hour away from Kansas’ Lawrence campus, the best team on that day won, not the best team.
The Sooners and Jayhawks were also two of the Final Four teams in 2002, but neither team survived its semifinal game, thus ruining what could have been a rematch of the NCAA championship game of 14 years earlier.
It is true that Oklahoma has had only limited success historically against the mighty Jayhawks in basketball, but the two conference rivals have had many memorable games, not the least of which was the thrilling triple-overtime game at Kansas in which 2016-17 national player of the year Buddy Hield exploded for 46 points, including eight three-pointers, in a losing effort.
In the Big 12 basketball era, which began in 1996-97, the Sooners and Jayhawks have played seven games that were decided by five points or less, four of those were by three points or less.
Of the three Big 12 teams still in the NCAA Tournament this season, Oklahoma has the longest rivalry with Kansas. The Jayhawks and Sooners have been members of the same conference since 1919, or 98 seasons. Baylor joined the Big 12 when it first began in 1996, and West Virginia has been a full-fledged member for just five years.
Because of that history, my bet would be that Oklahoma is pulling a little bit more for the Jayhawks to do well and go all the way in the 2017 NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship.
After all, if Kansas does well in the tournament – and the odds of success are more with the Jayhawks this season than the other two Big 12 participants – the Big 12 does well and, by extension, so does Oklahoma. That goes for both reputation and revenue.
Rock Chalk!