Oklahoma basketball: ESPN’s Joe Lunardi has Sooners making NCAA Tournament
By Chip Rouse
With all the breaking news surrounding the football program the last few weeks, the men’s Oklahoma basketball program has been quietly and quite effectively doing its thing with little fanfare.
Under new head coach Porter Moser and almost a complete revamp of the roster from a year ago, the Sooners are off to an 8-2 start, including a couple of wins over ranked teams.
OU has two more home nonconference games remaining in December — on Sunday against UT Arlington and next Wednesday versus Alcorn State — before opening the Big 12 portion of the schedule on New Year’s Day, Jan. 1 with a home contest against Kansas State.
The Sooner men’s basketball program does not regularly contend for conference and national championships like the much-heralded football program does. In fact, Oklahoma has never won a national championship in basketball, although the Sooners have been a national runner-up twice and been a participant in five Final Fours.
It’s true that Oklahoma is not a traditional college basketball power, but the Sooners have made 33 NCAA Tournament appearances. Believe it or not, Oklahoma is tied for 13th among NCAA Division I programs for the most NCAA Tournament appearances. Kentucky leads all schools with 58, followed by North Carolina (51) and Kansas (49).
At the beginning of the current college basketball season, ESPN college basketball analyst and resident NCAA Tournament “Bracketology” expert Joe Lunardi did not have the Sooners making it into the NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship for 2021-22, something that has only happened twice in the last nine seasons.
There was good reason for that, however. Only four scholarship players remained from last year’s Oklahoma roster, which meant that Moser had to work fast, after accepting to job to replace Lon Kruger, who coached the Sooners for the last 10 seasons, to rebuild a roster decimated by transfers. Moser utilized that same transfer highway to bring in seven new players of high regard along with two talented freshman recruits.
Oklahoma was picked to finish seventh in the Big 12 Preseason Poll conducted by the league coaches.
The big question entering the new season was: How fast could this new group come together? The answer is: Better than anyone could have reasonably expected, including ESPN’s Lunardi.
Two weeks ago, after Oklahoma knocked off then-No. 14 Florida, Lunardi had the Sooners on the 10 line and one of the last four teams to receive a bye and not having to make the 64-team tournament field via a play-in game.
The win over Florida was followed by another victory over a ranked team from the SEC conference. The Sooners defeated 12th-ranked Arkansas last Saturday, and in the latest ESPN Bracketology projections, released on Dec. 17, Oklahoma has advanced to a No. 8 seed.
Oklahoma is not ranked at the present time, but is receiving votes in both major polls. Based on votes received, the Sooners would be 29th this week in the Associated Press rankings and 31st in the Coaches Poll.
Lunardi’s current NCAA Tournament projects have seven Big 12 schools making the NCAA Tournament this season. He has Baylor as the No. 1 overall seed, Kansas (2 seed), Iowa State (4), Texas (6), Texas Tech (7), Oklahoma (8) and West Virginia (11).