The Oklahoma men's basketball team has had one resolute, do-or-bust goal this entire season: Make it to the NCAA Tournament.
The Sooners looked to be well on their way of achieving that objective when they began the 2024-25 campaign with 13 consecutive wins, including victories over two teams (Michigan and Louisville) that are currently ranked in the Associated Press Top 25.
The 13-0 start to the season was the best by an Oklahoma men's team since Billy Tubbs' 1987-88 team won 14 straight games to begin the season.
Hard to imagine that OU wouldn't be able to make the NCAA Tournament's 68-team field with that much success right out of the gate, except Sooner Nation has seen this movie before -- for each of the last three years, to be painfully precise -- and the ending was the same all three times: no NCAA Tournament for the male edition of the Crimson and Cream.
Oklahoma started out 15-1 in Porter Moser's first season (2021-22) as the Sooners' head coach, 10-2 in 2022-23 and 13-1 in 2023-24. OU failed to make the NCAA Tournament all three years. And adding insult to injury, the Sooners were the first team left out of the tournament, No. 69 out of the 68 teams that made it into the field.
So all this season, Sooner fans and the media alike have been diligently tracking Oklahoma's progress toward ending its three-year absence from the big stage known as March Madness.
The Sooners were not included in ESPN Bracketology expert Joe Lunardi's preseason NCAA Tournament projections for the 2024-25 college basketball campaign, but that changed after OU's positive start to the season. The Sooners vacillated between a 9 and 11 seed for much of the season, once appearing as high as an 8 seed, in Lunardi's weekly projections of what the field could look like on Selection Sunday.
But after Oklahoma lost seven of eight games over a month's time in the incredibly difficult SEC gauntlet, the Sooners found themselves squarely back where Lunardi had them to begin the season as far as making the NCAA Tournament is concerned: on the outside looking in.
Desperately needing a couple of wins to close out the regular season and right the faltering ship, Oklahoma gained a tad of redemption -- but, more importantly, improved its NCAA tourney worthiness -- by beating then-No. 15 Missouri at home and then went on the road and defeated chief rival Texas.
As Oklahoma gets ready to play Georgia in the opening round of the SEC Men's Basketball Tournament on Wednesday, national opinion by college basketball experts, including Lunardi, is mixed on whether the Sooners have done enough to earn an NCAA Tournament at-large bid.
Some believe OU will be one of the last teams to make it into the field. There are others, however, who say the Sooners need a win over Georgia, which beat OU by 10 points earlier in the season, in the SEC tournament to break their three-year NCAA Tournament absence.
It probably doesn't help OU's cause that the SEC is projected to send at least 12 teams to this year's NCAA Tournament. If the Sooners' get in, they would be the 13th SEC team.
Oklahoma played 13 games against teams that have been ranked in the AP Top 25 this season and won six of them.
Many would argue that every game in the SEC is like an NCAA Tournament game. Unfortunately, there just aren't that many NCAA Tournament bids to go around, which is a prime reason why talks are actively going on about expanding the tournament field.
We will have to wait until Sunday, regardless of the outcome of the game Wednesday night against Georgia, to learn the Sooners' postseason fate. OU may or may not achieve its season-long goal, but that doesn't mean the season has to be over.
After missing out on March Madness a year ago, the Sooners declined an invitation to the National Invitation Tournament despite a 20-12 overall record. Moser's first OU team was 18-15, not good enough to earn a spot in the NCAA Tournament, but did accept an NIT bid and played two games at home before being eliminated.
This year's Oklahoma team is in similar position to last year's team, and with virtually the same record except in a more difficult conference, the Sooners are more than good enough to earn a postseason opportunity, and I'm certain Moser would say his players have worked hard and with grit all season and deserve that opportunity.
Whether Moser has done enough to earn a fifth season at the helm of the OU men's program is a question for another day, but the SEC tournament should not be the final stop for this group of Sooners.