If it seems like the Oklahoma Sooners haven't had a stretch of basketball this bad in a long time, it's because they haven't.
The Sooners were embarrassed again on Wednesday night, this time by No. 21 Missouri, 82-58. It was a 20-point deficit at halftime and was never a game worth traveling to Columbia for.
After starting the season 13-0 through nonconference play, the Sooners are 16-8 and 3-8 against SEC competition. Missouri improved to 18-6.
The loss to Missouri concluded a stretch of five straight games against ranked opponents for OU, which went 1-4 during that span. It's obviously been a tough schedule for OU, but the frustration from Sooner Nation is less about losing, but how it happens.
The Sooners are on a three-game losing streak, and the first two losses were from top-5 teams last week. OU lost to Mizzou by 24 points. No. 4 Tennessee beat OU by 18. No. 1 Auburn won by 28. The closest defeat was an 18-point margin, and that was padded thanks to the Sooners' late 7-0 run when Tennessee had its junior varsity squad in.
According to TJ Eckert of KTUL, the OU men's basketball program hasn't suffered three straight losses of 18 or more points since 1963 -- 62 years ago. The Sooners were in the Big Eight Conference then and ESPN didn't exist yet the last time the Sooners were losing this bad.
The average margin of defeat during the losing streak is 23.3, and, again, that could be worse. Blowouts to a pair of top-5 teams might not be worth getting worked up over, but Missouri is just inside the top 25 and was coming off back-to-back losses. Albeit, the Tigers did actually put up a fight in their losses.
I wrote about this last weekend after the Tennessee loss, but somehow, it's gotten even worse just a game later. These Sooners make good college basketball teams look unbeatable.
The Sooners are 0-6 against SEC teams currently ranked in the Associated Press Top 25. The average margin of defeat against those teams is 17.8 points. If OU plays a ranked opponent, it will most likely lose by at least 15 points.
Texas A&M, which OU has played twice, is the only currently ranked conference team the Sooners got within single digits of. But even those outings were ugly. OU squandered an 18-point lead the first meeting.
Again, these are not expectations for OU to be taking down top-10 teams on a weekly basis. There is just a plea that a team with NCAA Tournament aspirations should at least look like it belongs in the same conference as the best.