Oklahoma basketball has completed its daunting February schedule — nine games total with five against teams ranked during the month in the Associated Press Top 25 — with a winning record.
Playing in the highly competitive Big 12, which for most of the past month featured two of the top three teams in the country, and this past week Nos. 1 and 2, finishing any month during the conference with more wins than losses is a big deal for any team not named Kansas (and Baylor, for this season at least).
The Sooners finished February with a 5-4 record. Among their five victories were wins over then-No. 13 West Virginia, No. 22 Texas Tech and on Saturday at 20th-ranked West Virginia.
If you don’t think that’s a big deal, consider that the Sooners’ Final Four team in 2015-16 was just 4-4 in February, The OU men had not posted a winning record in the second month of the year since 2014-15, and it’s just the second time in the last 10 seasons that the Sooners have posted a record above .500 in February.
Oklahoma’s recent success is also important because at this time of the season, with teams vying for postseason positioning, teams trending in a positive direction are better off than those taking the opposite track.
The Sooners have been on and off the over-cliched NCAA Tournament “bubble” most of this season. If the season ended today, its probably safe to say that Oklahoma would be in. And if it indeed works out that way, the Sooners and their fans can look to the final week of February as the final push that punched their party ticket.
Not more than a week ago, ESPN’s Joe Lunardi projected Oklahoma as one of the last four teams to make the NCAA Tournament field. And even then, he had the Sooners on the 12 line and having to win a midweek play-in game to make it to the official “Dance” party that kicks off just a couple of days later.
After the Sooners’ home win over Texas Tech last Tuesday, Lunardi moved Oklahoma to a projected 11 seed, but still having to survive a play-in game.
In his latest “Bracketology” forecast, Lunardi has the Sooners as a 10 seed, which is basically back to where they were after opening the Big 12 season with an 11-3 overall record and back-to-back conference wins over Kansas State and Texas the first week in January.
Unless OU falls flat on its face in its final two games of the regular season this week — at home against Texas and at TCU — the Sooners’ NCAA Tournament invite should be “in the mail.”
Count the Sooners in the Big Dance, for now.