It's amazing sometimes how much one win can impact a season. That's the effect, though, the Oklahoma men's basketball team is hoping its win over then-No. 21 Mississippi State on Saturday will have on the Sooners' frustrating season.
Everyone knows how promising the 2024-25 campaign started out with 13 consecutive wins before embarking on the monster SEC schedule that featured a top-25 opponent virtually every game out.
The game with No. 17 Kentucky on Wednesday night represents the eighth game against a ranked Associated Press Top 25 opponent in the last nine games, and three more NCAA Tournament bound teams lie straight ahead to finish out OU's regular-season schedule.
The Sooners' win over Mississippi State on Saturday ended a five-game losing streak that saw OU's conference record tumble to 2-10 and their chances of making it into the NCAA Tournament field for the first time in four years hanging by the slimmest of threads.
OU coach Porter Moser, who is clearly on the hot seat after three straight sub-.500 conference seasons and failing to make the NCAA Tournament in his three previous seasons in Norman, knows better than anybody how important the win last Saturday was to instill some confidence and momentum in his struggling team.
"It is all about surviving and advancing right now," the Sooner head coach told reporters on Tuesday. "Everyone is concerned about projections, but I keep telling the guys that they're in March Madness right now. They know where we stand, and they know the stakes of each remaining game."
The next of which is a beatable young Kentucky team that comes limping into Norman likely without the services of two of its best players. This is a game the Sooners can and need to win.
The question to be answered Wednesday night on the Lloyd Noble Center hardwood is can the Sooners ride the momentum from the Mississippi State win and muster the will and toughness to pull off back-to-back top-25 upsets?
The game with Kentucky is the next-to-last home game of the season.
"It's just about believing," Moser said, "and I hope this thing (LNC) is packed against Kentucky."
Oklahoma is now 5-8 in Quad 1 games and No. 51 in the NET rankings, two major criteria taken into account by the NCAA Tournament selection committee. And with all four of the Sooners' remaining regular-season games against Quad 1 opponents, they have a golden opportunity to control their ultimate fate.
"We have a path," Moser said. "It's a difficult path, and I'm not to sit up here and say that it isn't, but it is a path, which is what you want to have at this point in the season."