Oklahoma basketball: Final trio of games all or nothing for sinking Sooners

The phrase “up and down” has been used a lot over the past six months in describing Oklahoma basketball and football.

In both sports, things were going well…until they weren’t.

The football Sooners started out 9-0 before falling in two of their final three regular-season games, which denied them a conference championship for the first time in seven seasons.

And here we are again with three regular-season games remaining. Only now we’re talking about the basketball Sooners.

In basketball, the OU men finished the nonconference portion of their schedule and entered Big 12 action with a 10-2 record. Since then, the Sooners are 4-12 heading into the final three games of the regular season.

The preseason projections for the 2021-22 OU men’s team were not overly encouraging. Big 12 coaches picked the Sooners to finish sixth in the final league standings in their annual preseason poll. With nine newcomers and a new head coach and coaching staff, about the only people who believed this new-look Oklahoma team could be an NCAA Tournament team were the Sooners themselves.

And early on this season, it appeared they indeed were capable of proving the experts wrong. Oklahoma moved from outside of ESPN college basketball expert Joe Lunardi’s “Bracketology” projections all the way to a probable No. 8 seed in the second week of January. That’s when a bit of reality took hold and wins became harder and harder to come by in the country’s strongest basketball conference.

Heading into the final three games of the regular season, the Sooners’ ship is sinking fast. Losers of seven of its last eight games, Oklahoma has effectively played itself out of NCAA Tournament consideration barring a minor miracle.

With four top-15 wins to their credit, the Sooners likely would get an invite to the National Invitation Tournament, but as far as the Big Dance goes, Joe Lunardi’s ESPN Bracketology projections currently have OU as one of the first four teams left out of the NCAA Tournament, and that projection is likely to drop even further after the Sooners 22-point loss on Tuesday at Texas Tech.

The best OU can do going forward is to win each of its final three games — at home against Oklahoma State and West Virginia and on the road at Kansas State to close out the regular season — and perhaps an opening-round win in the Big 12 Tournament. All of that seems improbable at this point in time, but let’s say the Sooners go three of four over that stretch of games. That would leave them with a 7-11 conference record and 17-15 overall

There is some precedent for a sub-.500 Oklahoma team to make the NCAA Tournament. The 2019 Sooner team finished with a conference record of 7-12 in Big 12 play and was a No. 9 seed in the tournament.

The NCAA Tournament selection committee would take into consideration the strength of the Big 12, which has a NET (NCAA evaluation tool) ranking 20 points better than the next closest conference (the Big Ten at 57.1). But Oklahoma still has to earn its own way into the tournament, and as of late, the Sooners have not been a team worthy of an NCAA Tournament at-large bid.

The Sooners absolutely must win their two upcoming home games, but that alone probably won’t be enough. They really needed an upset win at Texas Tech or at least a competitive showing, but instead turned in a dismal performance, suffering their worst loss of the season in both points scored (42) and margin of defeat (22 points).

Oklahoma definitely has some work to do, but it’s a sad scenario to know that the best outcome you can hope for may not be good enough.

“It would have been a great notch on our belt to make the NCAA Tournament,” head coach Porter Moser said after the OU loss to Texas Tech. “We have to win some of these…We have some ball left. Don’t count us out.”

Unfortunately, many already have.