The 2025-26 edition of Oklahoma men's basketball has represented the quintessence of an up-and-down season.
With a regular-season schedule of 30-plus games, the college basketball season is filled with plenty of ups and downs, and especially so when the hoops slate flips over after the December holiday season triggering the beginning of the more highly competitive conference portion of the schedule.
The 2025-26 Oklahoma basketball season has so far been a story of three chapters with a fourth pending.
The first part featured a highly respectable 11-3 start to the season in nonconference play. The second part was more of a horror story, with the Sooners going winless over nine consecutive games. Over the final eight games of the regular season, however, which came to a conclusion this past weekend, the season story changed dramatically.
Sooners enter SEC Men's Basketball Tournament just as hot as anyone
Heading into this week's SEC Men's Basketball Tournament, OU is one of the hottest teams in the SEC. The Sooners have gone 6-2 in their last eight games, including four consecutive wins to end the regular season. Only Florida (8-0) and Alabama (7-1), the top two seeds in the SEC Tournament, have better records over that same span.
If the SEC standings were based on the final eight games of the regular season, Oklahoma would be tied for third with Arkansas and Tennessee. Vanderbilt (5-3) and Georgia (5-3) would be tied for sixth, and Texas A&M, Missouri and Texas would be tied for eighth, all with 4-4 records.
If the SEC Tournament seedings were based on the results of the final eight games, OU would be the 5 seed and would receive an opening-round bye, awaiting the winner of a first-round matchup between the 12 and 13 seeds.
We all know that's not how the season is officially played out, but if you are a Sooner basketball fan, it's certainly better than contemplating and cursing what might have been.
With an all-new starting five taking the floor for the start of the 2025-26 season, the Sooners showed a lot of promise against their schedule of nonconference opponents. Oklahoma went 10-3 over the first half of the season with losses to Gonzaga, Nebraska and Arizona State. And then opened up their second season in the SEC with a 16-point win over Ole Miss on Jan. 3 to go to 11-3.
Oklahoma had won nine of its last 10 games after the win over Ole Miss in early January. At that point in the season, everything seemed to be on an upward trajectory. They say, you're never as good as you think you are, and you're never as bad as you think you are, but things got really ugly for Sooner basketball following the win over Ole Miss.
OU would not win another game in the month of January, losing eight straight, plus one more in the first week of February. Just like that, the Sooners' overall record went from 11-3 to 11-12 and 1-9 in the conference standings.
The Sooners headed to then-No. 15 Vanderbilt the first weekend in February just one loss away from tying the program record for most consecutive losses. That's when the nightmare nine-game losing skid came to a merciful end, but only by the narrowest of margins, 92-91, after OU almost managed to cough away a 21-point lead with under four minutes remaining in the game.
That's when everything turned back on the up and up for the struggling Oklahoma squad and marked an important and welcome turnaround in the season.
And the season continues on with No. 11 Oklahoma taking on No. 14 South Carolina in the opening round of the SEC Tournament on Wednesday night.