Oklahoma basketball: Sooners’ path through the Big 12 Tournament

This week begins what some call the third season of college basketball — otherwise known as the postseason — and for the Oklahoma basketball team that means competing in the Big 12 Tournament as a prelude to what it anticipates as an even bigger dance party to follow.

We’re speaking, of course, about the likelihood that the Sooners will make it into the NCAA Tournament field, something that appeared to be very tenuous just a couple of weeks ago.

But first things first. OU still has the Big 12 Men’s Basketball Championship in front of it and, more specifically, a date with the No. 10 seed West Virginia Mountaineers on Wednesday night at the Sprint Center in Kansas City, Missouri.

Oklahoma (19-12, 7-11) was outstanding against nonconference competition in the first six weeks of the season, going 11-1 and with wins over now No. 20 Wofford, Florida and Creighton. The Sooners lone loss was to Wisconsin, currently ranked 18th in the Associated Press Top 25.

Following its impressive nonconference run, OU began conference play by having to play two of the best teams in the league — Kansas and Texas Tech — on the road in its first three games. Despite the difficult start, the Sooners managed a 2-2 record through their first four Big 12 games. But then, as Sooner fans are painfully aware, things took a drastic turn for the worse.

It’s not how you start, but how you finish that matters

Beginning in mid-January, with a 13-point home loss to Kansas State, Oklahoma proceeded to lose six of its next eight games, including one stretch during which it lost five straight times.

By the second week in February, the Sooners stood 3-9 in the Big 12 and sinking fast. Somehow Lon Kruger’s team had managed to avoid falling all the way to the bottom in the conference standings, instead mired in the eight spot out of the 10 league teams, which is precisely where they were projected to finish, according to the vote of league coaches in the Big 12 Preseason Poll.

Seemingly left for dead, the Oklahoma men managed to rise up and finish out the regular season winning four of its final six games. It didn’t make a huge difference in the conference standings, although the Sooners were able to slip by TCU into the seven spot despite having the same 7-11 record in league games (OU has the tiebreaker by virtue of winning both regular season games against the Horned Frogs).

OU’s Big 12 Tournament road map

Oklahoma’s seventh-place finish left it just outside of the cutline to receive a first-round bye in the Big 12 Championship. As the seven seed, the Sooners will play the second game on Wednesday night, against the 10 seed, West Virginia. The Sooners and Mountaineers split their two conference games this season, with each winning on their home floor, and both finished out the Big 12 season strong, which should make for a good game on Wednesday night in Kansas City.

If OU makes it by West Virginia for a second time this season, it will advance to the quarterfinal round, where it will face the tournament’s No. 2 seed, Texas Tech (26-5, 14-4), in the first game of the evening session on Thursday. The Sooners led much of the way before losing to the Red Raiders in Lubbock in early January, and a month later lost by a dozen to Tech in Norman, OU’s fourth of five consecutive losses).

The Sooners’ received a break, in the view of yours truly, by being seeded in the bracket opposite co-Big 12 champion and top-seed Kansas State.

Had OU been the No. 8 or No. 9 seed in this year’s Big 12 Tournament, for example, K-State would have been Oklahoma’s quarterfinal opponent, and Kruger and Company have not had a lot of success against the guys in purple, losing twice this season by sizeable margins and 10 times in the 16 games that Kruger has gone up against his alma mater as the Sooners’ head coach.

OK, it is fairly unlikely that Oklahoma will get by Texas Tech and earn a spot in the semifinals. But indulge me for a moment, and say somehow they do. Waiting for the Sooners among the final four teams remaining in the tournament will be either No. 3 seed Kansas or No. 6 seed Texas. By this time, should they be so fortunate — and lucky — to get this far, the Sooners will literally be on their last legs. Three consecutive days of basketball tends to do that to you.

That’s as far as I’m going to take this wish and prayer. While it’s fun to dream and let our mind wander every so often, we have to remain grounded in reality and the situation as it is and not as we wish it to be.

Thanks to a solid regular-season finish — and especially the win over then-No. 13 Kansas – Oklahoma is probably safely in the NCAA Tournament field. But the Sooners’ should not go to Kansas City thinking that way. They need to beat West Virginia before they even consider celebrating.