Oklahoma Basketball 20th in Associated Press All-Time Top 100
By Chip Rouse
No Sooner fan would question that football is the bread and butter of Oklahoma athletics and one of college football’s all-time elite brands. What you may not be as well versed on is that Oklahoma basketball is considered by at least one source as one college basketball’s all-time top-25, as well.
Last fall, the Associated Press announced its all-time College Football Top 25. This past week, AP editors and writers did something similar to reflect on college excellence over the six decades that the AP has been ranking the best teams in college basketball every season.
It is interesting that as much as the game has changed in more than a half century, the schools that were the best of their time in the early years of the AP poll are still at the top of their game today.
It’s not a great surprise that the top five teams in the AP all-time Top 100 in College Basketball are, in order, Kentucky, North Carolina, Duke, UCLA and Kansas. All five were among the best teams in college basketball this past season, and they have been at or close to the top throughout a good number of the 68 seasons that the Associated Press has ranked college basketball teams.
In determining the top 100 college basketball teams since the inaugural season of the AP poll, in 1949, AP officials factored the number of poll appearances, as a measure of consistency, and the number of times a school was ranked No. 1, which was used to separate out the best of the best.
Based on this measurement criteria, the Oklahoma men’s program came in 20th in the all-time rankings.
Although the Sooners appeared in two Final Fours (in 1939 and 1947) before the first Associated Press college basketball poll was issued, Oklahoma basketball did not start commanding national attention until the decade of the 1980s, when Billy Tubbs took over as head coach and All-Americans named Wayman Tisdale, Stacey King and Mookie Blaylock put Sooner basketball on the map on a consistent basis.
Tubbs, the winningest coach in OU men’s history took 12 Oklahoma teams to the NCAA Basketball Tournament in his 14 seasons at OU, including the championship game of the 1988 tournament. His successor, Kelvin Sampson, kept the string alive, leading the Sooners to 11 NCAA Tournament appearances between 1994 and 2006, including the 2001-02 Final Four.
The Sooners did not appear every week in the AP Top 25 until the 1984-85 season. Since then, the Oklahoma men have accomplished that eight times, the most recent being a year ago under Lon Kruger and behind the firepower of national player of the year Buddy Hield.