Is this OU team really better than the Trae Young Sooners?
All season long, college basketball know-it-alls have been advocating that this season’s edition of Sooner basketball is actually better than the Trae Young-led team of a year ago. Last season, Young and the Sooners were the talk of the college basketball world after firing out to a 12-1 start. Oklahoma won four of its first five conference games to improve its overall record to 14-2 before harsh reality set in and the young Sooner squad discovered it wasn’t as invincible as it thought it was.
Young and the Sooners struggled to a 5-4 record in January last season after starting out 3-1. And that wasn’t even the worst of it. In February last season, Oklahoma came away with just one victory in eight games. From Feb. 3 to the end of the 2017-18 season, the Sooners were 2-9 and finished with just four total wins after Jan. 13 and an 18-14 overall record.
Flash forward to the final week in January this season, Oklahoma sits at 15-6 on the season and a 3-5 mark in the Big 12. That is just two week’s removed from being ranked as high as No. 19 in the USA Today Coaches Poll. A year ago at this time, the Sooners owned a strikingly similar 16-5 overall mark and owned a record of 6-3 in league play.