The Oklahoma Sooners will take on the Colorado Buffaloes on Wednesday night in the first round of the College Basketball Crown, but not actually.
The Buffaloes will barely even be the team they were throughout the season while missing three of their top four scorers after those players have already made their intentions known of entering the Transfer Portal once it officially opens on Tuesday, April 7, after the national championship game.
Transfer Portal already draining Buffaloes before playing Sooners
Transferring players for Colorado include guard Isaiah Johnson, forward Sebastian Rancik and forward Bangot Dak. Johnson led the Buffaloes this season with 16.9 points a game, while the other two also averaged double-digits with 12.3 for Rancik and 11.5 for Dak.
Combined, that outgoing trio accounted for over half of Colorado's points per game during the season with 40.7 of 80.0. The Buffaloes will be forced to find new scoring threats after relying on the same players for the entire season. And all the losses have been reported just since Friday, less than a week before tip-off.
Meanwhile, the Sooners have not lost any player to the Transfer Portal, at least not yet. Based on its released travel roster, OU will be without sophomore guard Dayton Forsythe, redshirt senior guard Jeff Nwankwo and freshman forward Andreas Holst. None of them started, and although the team obviously improved after Forsythe returned from injury, none of those losses will be detrimental to the outcome for the Sooners.
Read more: Oklahoma quietly finds perfect consolation after March Madness heartbreak
As the Sooners head to Vegas, there's no little risk in betting on OU with a monstrous advantage of just having players show up.
The Sooners and Buffaloes will tip off at 7 p.m. CT Wednesday from MGM Grand Garden Arena. The game will be on FS1. The winner will face the victor between Baylor and Minnesota.
The postseason tournament awards a $500,000 NIL prize pool, with semifinalists getting $50,000, $100,000 to the runner-up and $300,000 to the champion. That means, with a reduced roster, Colorado not only could gift the Sooners a win, but also $50,000.