Oklahoma basketball: Sooners hovering between 8 and 10-line in ‘Bracketology’
By Chip Rouse
Men’s Oklahoma basketball was a non-qualifier in most every preseason NCAA Tournament projection.
Easy to understand the reasoning, given that the Sooners were returning just four scholarship players from a team that advanced to the second round in last year’s NCAA Basketball Tournament and was adding nine newcomers plus a new head coach.
Fortunately for the Sooner players and fans, head coach Porter Moser had other plans, however, and he has assembled a team that has quickly come together and demonstrated that it is capable of competing with anybody. And it’s a good thing, because playing in the Big 12 means you are going up against a ranked team — or a team ranked in the top 40 of the KenPom rankings — practically every time out.
As an example, OU has faced six ranked teams in its last eight games and goes up against top-ranked Auburn out of the SEC on Saturday. The Sooners have beaten three teams ranked in the top 15 this season at the time the game was played. In Oklahoma’s remaining 11 game in the regular season, six are against teams that are either currently ranked in the top 25 or have been at some point in the season.
Playing in a conference as strong as the Big 12 is this season certainly enhances the chances of making it into the NCAA Tournament, even with a .500 record in conference play.
Joe Lunardi, ESPN’s resident college basketball crystal-ball observer, has been paying attention to what is going on in Big 12 basketball this season. In his latest NCAA Tournament projection, he has eight Big 12 teams, including the Oklahoma Sooners, earning its way into the Big Dance in March.
Over the course of this college basketball season, Lunardi’s “Bracketology” window into the projected NCAA Tournament field has had the Sooners everywhere from the outside looking in, to on the tournament bubble and from an 11 seed to a 7 seed. As of games on Jan. 27, Lunardi has Oklahoma as a No. 9 seed in the West Region and, interesting enough, matched up against Loyola of Chicago, Moser’s former team, a projected No. 8 seed.
Lunardi is currently projecting both Kansas and Baylor as No. 1 seeds, Texas Tech as a 4 seed, Texas and Iowa State as 7 seeds, TCU as an 11 seed and West Virginia having to play its way into the tournament field as a 12 seed.