Oklahoma basketball: Missing postseason out of ordinary for Sooner men

Oklahoma is a football school, first and foremost, but that doesn’t mean Oklahoma basketball isn’t taken seriously.

this season marks the 44th year since the Billy Tubbs era of Sooner men’s basketball, which commenced in 1980. In 44 postseasons, dating back to Tubbs’ first season in Norman, Oklahoma has missed postseason play just eight times, including this season.

Only one of the five Oklahoma head coaches since 1980 (Jeff Capel) has missed the postseason two years in a row.

In 26 seasons under Tubbs and his successor, Kelvin Sampson, a period of time that stretched from 1981 to 2006, Oklahoma made 20 NCAA appearances, including two Final Fours, and five times played in the National Invitation Tournament. Only once during that time (1980-81) did the Sooners not make it to the postseason.

Lon Kruger took Oklahoma to eight NCAA Tournaments in 10 seasons (2011-2021), and Jeff Capel made two NCAA Tournaments in his five seasons at OU.

Over 26 consecutive seasons, Tubbs’ and Sampson’s Sooner teams won 20 or more games 22 times, including four seasons of 30-plus wins. OU was ranked in the top 25 of the Associated Press poll 12 times in Tubbs’ 14 seasons and nine times in the dozen years Sampson was at the helm. In the 1989-90 season, Oklahoma ended the regular season as the country’s top-ranked team in the AP poll.

Tubbs’ teams won four Big Eight regular-season championships and finished second four times. Sampson delivered a Big 12 co-championship, four second-place finishes and five times his Sooner teams finished third in the final conference standings.

So, it isn’t that Oklahoma men’s basketball hasn’t had outstanding teams in its history and some of the country’s top players. Waymen Tisdale (1982-85) and Alvan Adams (1972-75) had multiple All-American seasons at OU and went on to outstanding NBA careers. Mookie Blaylock (1987-89) and Stacey King (1985-89), both First-Team All-America selections, played on the Sooners’ 1987-88 national championship runner-up team.

And Blake Griffin (2009) and Buddy Hield (2016) were named National Player of the Year, two of four such honors bestowed on Oklahoma basketball players in program history (Vic Holt, 1928, and Gerald Tucker, 1947, were the others).

All of this to say that Moser has a heavy precedent to live up to and a ton of work to do not only return OU men’s basketball to regional and national relevance, but to a program that the university and its fans can truly be proud of.

Porter Moser has it in him — we’ve seen that in what he was able to do at Loyola Chicago for a decade — and he has the resources and administrative support to get the job done. But he can’t be expected to get the job done all by himself. He needs better players (more talented, more athletic, more size) and a staff capable of developing them to be the best they can be.

The best players in the country aren’t going to come to Oklahoma. That’s a hard-nosed truth, but it doesn’t mean the Sooners can’t get good players. Aside from the KU’s, North Carolinas, Dukes and Kentuckys, which do have their picks of the elite players out of the high school ranks, other schools that don’t have the basketball history that Oklahoma has manage to do it and with some consistency.

The time is now for Moser and the OU men’s program. Another Sooner season like the one just completed, you can be pretty certain that Moser’s time in Norman will be in serious jeopardy.