The Oklahoma men's basketball team will begin 2025 with a 13-0 record and as one of four remaining undefeated teams in college basketball. Pretty amazing considering that this same Sooner team was picked to finish next to last this season in the 16-team SEC.
There were a lot of unknowns about this Oklahoma team at the time the media vote was recorded for the SEC Preseason Poll, not the least of which was the fact that for the fourth straight season the majority of the Sooner roster is composed of transfers.
There is something different about this team, though, compared to Porter Moser's previous Sooner teams. The 2024-25 edition of OU men's basketball keeps finding ways to outduel its opponents and refuses to lose. Can the Sooners continue to defy the preseason projections as both the stakes and the schedule become increasingly more challenging as conference play tips off this weekend?
Nine different SEC teams, including Oklahoma, are ranked in both the AP Top 25 and the USA Today Coaches Poll this week, and the Sooners will play eight of them this season and No. 13/12 Texas A&M twice.
From a team that didn't receive a single vote in the AP or Coaches Poll to begin the season, Oklahoma is up to No. 10 this week in the Coaches Poll while staying put at No. 12 in the AP Top 25.
The Sooners have also been steady movers in ESPN's Joe Lunardi's "Bracketology" projections for the 2025 NCAA Men's Tournament.
OU has gone from being left out of the tournament bracket for a fourth straight season in Lunardi's early projections this season all the way to a No. 5 seed in his latest projections as of Dec. 24. In all, Lunardi has 13 SEC teams (out of 16 total) making the tournament field. If that were to come to pass, it would be the most from one conference in the history of the tournament.
Virtually every week over the next two-plus months, Oklahoma will be going up against a Quad 1 SEC opponent. Quad 1 games are those games at home against teams 1-30 in NCAA NET rankings, neutral-site games against teams ranked 1-50 and road games against teams ranked 1-75.
The Sooners (13-0) start out at No. 5/6 Alabama on Saturday, then return home to host Texas A&M the following Wednesday (Dec. 8).
We are going to learn a lot more about this Oklahoma team in very short order.