Second-half slides are becoming all too familiar to fans of Oklahoma basketball, and this year’s bunch of Sooner hardwood hoopsters regretfully are adding to what lately has become a perennial January/February meltdown.
The Sooners have lost five of their last seven games and seven of their last 11. The only plausible reason they find themselves on the right side of the NCAA Tournament bubble right now is an impressive 11-1 run in the nonconference portion of their 2018-19 schedule. OU’s lone loss in the early season was to a formidable Wisconsin team, which currently stands 19th in the national rankings.
That early season success has not carried over, however, once Big 12 play began for the crimson and cream. Oklahoma began conference action playing two of its first three games on the road against ranked opponents, Kansas and Texas Tech, at two of the most difficult places to play in the Big 12.
The Sooners actually held their own against the then fifth-ranked Jayhawks and eighth-ranked Red Raiders, falling by just seven points in both hostile arenas. Sandwiched in between the two road contests at KU and Tech was a solid 10-point win at home in a Bedlam battle with in-state rival Oklahoma State.
Believe it or not, it could be worse
Since those first three Big 12 games, Oklahoma is just 2-5, and to be brutally honest, the Sooners are fortunate not to be 1-9 right now. They trailed for a good part of the game against TCU and had to rally very late to pull out a two-point victory at home.
Three games later, in the rematch with Oklahoma State in Stillwater, OU fell behind by 19 points in the first 10 minutes of the game. The Sooners slowly chipped away at the deficit, cutting 11 points off of it by halftime and managing to climb all the way back at 54-all midway through the second half. OU outscored the Cowboys 16-7 the rest of the way to pull out an improbable 70-61 victory and a sweep of the regular-season Bedlam series.
The Sooners have lost three of their five home games with four remaining this season. No Big 12 team other than West Virginia has lost more than once in conference game at home so far this season. OU lost just twice to Big 12 opponents at home last season despite losing 12 of its last 16 games after mid-January.
Following the loss at Kansas two days into January, ESPN’s Joe Lunardi had the Sooners as a No. 4 seed in his rolling NCAA Tournament “Bracketology” projections. For a fleeting moment, Lunardi even had Oklahoma as a projected No. 3 seed, which would have positioned the Sooners as one of the nation’s top 12 teams, which is almost laughable given what we’ve seen from the team over the past month.
During their recent swoon, the Sooners’ NCAA Tournament worthiness has fallen from a projected No. 4 seed to a seven seed and this week to a 10 seed. That places OU right on the verge of becoming one of the last four teams to make the field — or worse, one of the last four out and with work to do.
The Sooners will host Texas Tech on Saturday in a second opportunity this week to knock off a ranked opponent in front of their home crowd. With three of its next four games after Saturday on the road, Oklahoma is rapidly running out of chances to legitimately secure its place in the 64-team NCAA Tournament field.
When it rains it pours; Sooners hoping to weather the storm
The OU scoring is not as balanced nor as consistent as it was through much of the first six weeks of the season. The is problem has been compounded by a shooting slump by the Sooners’ leading scorer, Christian James, who has averaged under 10 points a game and is shooting just 25 percent over his last three games, all OU losses. Oklahoma also is not rebounding as well in recent games as it has most of the season, and you can say the same about the Sooners’ effort lately on the defensive end.
These were once all strengths of 2018-19 Sooner basketball, but they have been missing the better part of the past month.
The Sooners, who were 13-3 a little less than a month ago, are now 15-8 and struggling. Although, they were the victims of some incredible clutch shooting by Iowa State over the final three minutes on Monday night that otherwise would have likely resulted in a huge OU win over arguably the best team in the Big 12 this season. The Cyclones made a trio of three-point shots from well behind the three-point arc and right before the shot clock expired that were like daggers to the heart of the Sooners’ upset bid.
If Oklahoma can play against Texas Tech like it did against Iowa State, albeit in a losing effort, earlier in the week, it could provide the spark the Sooners need to turn their season around before it’s too late. It definitely would be a momentum boost with trips to Baylor, TCU and Iowa State lying in wait over the next two weeks.
The way things stand right now, however, that might be a bar outside of OU’s grasp this season.