Oklahoma basketball: Sooner men still breathing, but shallowly

The men’s Oklahoma basketball victory over TCU on Saturday may have removed the Sooners from life-support status as far as the NCAA Tournament is concerned, but make no mistake, OU is still in intensive care.

The Sooners played their most complete game in over a month — and on the road at that — snapping a losing streak that had reached five games and seven defeats in the last 10 games.

OU’s win at TCU, enabling the Sooners to sweep the Horned Frogs for a second-straight season, also caught the attention of Mr. “Bracketology,” Joe Lunardi of ESPN, who this week moved Oklahoma off the shaky 12 line and back in a northerly direction in his projected tournament seedings.

In the midst of their 3-9 start in Big 12 action, the Sooners had gone into free fall in Lunardi’s dynamic Bracketology universe, going from a projected No. 3 seed to almost completely off the chart. A week ago, after back-to-back home losses to Iowa State and Texas Tech, Lunardi had placed OU as a 12 seed and among the tenuous last four teams to make this year’s tournament field.

And that’s just the half of it. Lunardi was saying that, as a 12 seed, OU would have to play its way into the 64-team field by winning a game on the Tuesday or Wednesday before the official tournament start.

That’s why the win at TCU was so important and gives the Sooners at least a temporary reprieve from becoming irrelevant as far as the 2019 Big Dance is concerned.

Lon Kruger’s crew is on the 10 line this week, but Lunardi still classifies the Sooners as a bubble team to make the tournament. He has them as receiving one of the last four at-large bids if the regular season were to end today. Kruger is one of just two coaches who have taken five different teams to the NCAA Tournament. He has led OU to five NCAA Tournament appearances in his seven previous seasons in Norman, including the Final Four in 2016.

Oklahoma Sooners Basketball

Oklahoma is currently 4-9 in conference games and eighth out of 10 teams in the Big 12 standings. Because of that, the Sooners are not even close to being out of the woods in their hope of making the tournament. I say the because no major college program begins the season with the postseason goal of playing in the National Invitation Tournament — or what some like to call the “Not Invited” tournament.

Of its five remaining regular-season games, three are at home at the Lloyd Noble Center, beginning with the game Saturday against Red River archrival Texas,  and two are away. The Sooners have games left with three ranked teams (No. 12 Kansas, No. 19 Iowa State and No. 23 Kansas State), providing an opportunity to add some quality wins to their NCAA Tournament resume.

The Sooners have Kansas at home, but they have to go on the road to face Iowa State and close out the regular season at Kansas State.

There is little question that OU faces an incredibly tough uphill climb just to put themselves in position to make this year’s NCAA Tournament. Realistically, the Sooners are going to have to win four of their remaining games. No Big 12 team has made the tournament with a conference record worse than 8-10, which is where Trae Young and the Sooners were a year ago, when they were awarded a 10 seed and bowed out in the opening round.

Short of going 4-1 in its next five games, Oklahoma will have to win the Big 12 Championship postseason tournament — something they have done twice, albeit with much better teams — to make an NCAA postseason appearance this season. The chances of that are slim and none.

So while hope still exists for the Oklahoma men to be playing past the second week in March, the Sooners are most probably looking at a three-letter postseason acronym rather than  a more desirable four-letter March Madness invite.