The Oklahoma Sooners -- yes, the same team once left for dead and mired in a nine-game conference losing streak -- blasted their way through two rounds of the SEC Men's Basketball Tournament and into the quarterfinal round before finally losing to No. 3-seeded Arkansas, which played its first tournament game after a double-bye.
The Sooners entered this week's conference tournament on the heels of a four-game winning streak and six wins in its final eight games to close out the regular season. As a direct result, Oklahoma managed to work its way onto the NCAA Tournament bubble according to every major outlet.
Sooners await NCAA Tournament fate on Selection Sunday
With back-to-back double-digit wins over South Carolina and Texas A&M to start the SEC Tournament, Oklahoma had managed to bubble its way up to the cutline as the first team left out in ESPN's Joe Lunardi's bracket projections on Friday.
"People show their true character and colors during struggle," OU head coach Porter Moser said on SEC Network after beating Texas A&M. "We were struggling, and we kept on coming up, preparing, believing, staying together, and I knew that if that was something we could get some confidence with a win, we had that 'it' factor of staying together."
Read more: Oklahoma's March Madness surge suddenly makes more Porter Moser feel inevitable
Acknowledging the Sooners' recent surge of success, Lunardi had said ahead of the SEC Tournament that OU would need to win three games to work its way into this year's NCAA Tournament field. And he reiterated that view on Thursday, saying the Sooners probably still needed to get past Arkansas and into the semifinals to be seriously considered for one of the final spots in the NCAA Tournament.
So the proverbial path that Moser and his players repeatedly referenced since the road win on Feb. 7 at then-No. 15 Vanderbilt, which literally turned the Sooners' season around, had seemingly came down to Friday's quarterfinal matchup with Arkansas, a team OU lost to 83-79 back in January. But then the Sooners lost again, 82-79.
It shouldn't come down to that, though.
What Oklahoma has demonstrated over its last 11 games meets the criteria of what the selection committee is looking for from teams that are deserving of an at-large tournament bid. For years, the selection committee has said it values teams that are playing their best at the end of the season.
There should be little question that Oklahoma is playing its best basketball of the season and is as hot right now as any team in the country, having won eight of its last 10 games before Friday in one of the top basketball conferences in the country.
There's also little question that the Sooners' tournament resume is seriously tainted by their mid-season nine-game losing streak, but it's also worth noting that three of those losses were by a combined total of seven points and five by single digits. OU also avenged four of its earlier losses in the last month.
Lunardi has had 10 SEC teams making the NCAA Tournament field. Oklahoma would make 11. Of the 10 SEC teams most bracket experts have in the tournament entering this weekend, the Sooners have beaten five of them (Vanderbilt, Georgia, Texas A&M, Texas and Missouri).
Missouri is a curious test case. Lunardi has the Tigers as a No. 11 seed, and USA Today has them as a 10 seed. Oklahoma split two games against Mizzou this season, losing by a single point in overtime in Columbia but winning by 16 in the rematch in Norman. Furthermore, Missouri ranks 58th in the NCAA NET rankings and 51st according to KenPom. That's 10 spots below where OU sits in both of those statistical measures.
That's the case for Oklahoma deserving of a spot in the 2026 NCAA Tournament. So you tell me, haven't the Sooners done enough lately to overcome their earlier missteps and play themselves into the annual college basketball extravaganza known as March Madness, regardless of what happened against Arkansas?
The final word rests with the NCAA selection committee, which will render its verdict on Sunday.