Oklahoma basketball: Sooners very close to cracking top 25
By Chip Rouse
Men’s Oklahoma basketball began the season unranked and projected to finish eighth out of the 10 Big 12 teams.
Related Story. The record is similar, but this Sooner squad is a real TEAM. light
Ten games into the 2018-19 season, however, the Sooners are 9-1 and knocking on the door of the nation’s top 25 teams.
The Kansas Jayhawks sit atop both the Associated Press Top 25 and USA Today Coaches Poll for Week 7 of the college basketball season. It is highly unusual not to see multiple Big 12 teams in the top-25 rankings, but Texas Tech, a perfect 10-0, is the only other ranked team out of the Big 12 a month and a half into the season. The Red Raiders are at 11 (Coaches Poll) and 12 (AP) this week.
In case you haven’t noticed, though, a third Big 12 team, the Oklahoma Sooners — yes, that same team that was projected to finish near the bottom of the conference this season — is right on the doorstep about to break into the top-25 rankings in both major polls. The Sooners have not been ranked in the top 25 since the week of Feb. 12 last season when they were ranked 23rd in the AP poll.
Oklahoma Sooners Basketball
Oklahoma sits in the No. 26 spot in the AP poll this week and No. 27 in the Coaches Poll, based on total votes received. Kansas State, TCU and Iowa State also received votes in both polls, but fewer than the surging Sooners.
This is in sharp contrast to how the Big 12 fared in the preseason polls for the 2018-19 season. Kansas was the top-ranked team in both of the major weekly polls. Kansas State (12/11), West Virginia (13) and TCU (20/21) were also ranked in the top 25 to begin the season in the AP and Coaches Poll, respectively.
Oklahoma did not receive a single vote in the preseason college basketball rankings.
Some college basketball experts will argue that OU’s 9-1 record is inflated and not a true representation of the team’s comparative strength. To that, I would simply counter by saying one top-30 ranking could be construed as an accident, two as coincidental, but three or more establishes a trend, and something to pay attention to.
That sizes up the current state of affairs for Lon Kruger’s Oklahoma squad. With two nonconference games to go — on Tuesday at home against Creighton and Friday at Northwestern — before opening up their Big 12 schedule and their ultimate test of the season at No. 1 Kansas, the Sooners have an excellent opportunity of cracking the top 25 for the first time since
Oklahoma has a 3-1 record this season against teams from Power Five conferences, is 0-1 against top-25 teams (the Sooners’ one loss was to Wisconsin) and 2-1 against teams in the Sagarin Top 50, with a chance to pick up a third win against Northwestern. The Sagarin college basketball rankings have Oklahoma at No. 18 currently and having played the 25th most difficult schedule to this point.
Kenpom.com ranks the Sooners 30th through games of Dec. 17 and No. 29 in schedule strength. Saving the best for last, based on RPI (Real Time Percentage Index), Oklahoma is currently No. 2 behind Kansas and rated as having played the fourth hardest schedule to this point.
As competitive as the Big 12 has been in basketball (No. 1 in RPI the past couple of seasons), and appears to be again this season, outside of perhaps Kansas, spots two through seven in the conference standings would seem to be pretty much up for grabs in 2018-19.
Count Oklahoma as one of those six teams that will be in the dogfight behind the seemingly invincible Jayhawks, who have won 14 consecutive Big 12 titles. That’s certainly a more positive outlook than the eight-place finish that was projected for the Sooners before the season started.