This week head coach Porter Moser and the men’s Oklahoma basketball team learned who their 2024 Big 12 Conference opponents will be.
The Sooners, who will be making their final journey around the Big 12 hoops circuit in the upcoming campaign before becoming a member of the SEC for the 2024-25 season, will play an 18-game conference schedule, as in previous years.
Unlike previous years, however, in which every conference team played every other league team in a home-and-away round-robin schedule, OU will only play five Big 12 teams twice this season. That is because of the addition of four new conference members — Cincinnati, Houston, UCF and BYU — which increases the number of teams from 10 to 14 this season.
The Sooners, who are coming off of a 15-17 2022-23 season and a tie for ninth place in the Big 12 with a 5-13 record, will play home-and-away games this season with Cincinnati, Iowa State, Kansas, Oklahoma State and Texas. OU will play the eight remaining conference teams just once. Four will come to Norman, and the Sooners will go on the road to play the other four teams.
According to Big 12 officials, the home-and-away opponents were selected “based on a combination of geography, historical results and a poll of the coaches to best balance the schedule in travel and competitiveness.
Historically speaking, Oklahoma has longtime series histories against Oklahoma State (247 games played), Kansas (225), Iowa State (215) and, of course the Red River rivalry with Texas (103).
The Sooners will host BYU, Houston, Texas Tech and West Virginia in Norman. The Houston game will feature Kelvin Sampson’s return to the Lloyd Noble Center. He was the head coach of Oklahoma men’s basketball from 1994 to 2006 and led the Sooners to one of their five Final Four appearances (2002).
Oklahoma will head out on the road to play Baylor, UCF, Kansas State and TCU.
The Sooners return three players who played significant minutes last season (Milos Uzan, Otega Oweh and Sam Godwin) along with six new players who join the roster via the transfer portal.
The nonconference portion of the Oklahoma 2023-24 schedule includes a home game with Providence as part of the Big 12-Big East Battle. The Sooners will also play North Carolina in Charlotte, North Carolina, in the Jumpman Invitational Tournament and will play in the inaugural Rady Childrens’ Invitational Nov. 23-24 in San Diego. In addition to OU, the teams that will participate in that tournament are Iowa, USC and Seton Hall.