Oklahoma men's basketball has carelessly backed itself into a perilous position with the road ahead even more treacherous than the one just traveled.
On Tuesday night in Columbia, South Carolina, the Sooners tasted defeat for the fifth consecutive game, falling 85-76 to the more energized South Carolina Gamecocks. The loss left Oklahoma (11-8) tied for last place in the SEC standings with LSU (13-6), both with 1-5 league records.
Oklahoma came out flat and lifeless from the start against South Carolina, falling behind 11-0 two-and-a-half minutes into the game, with all 11 points scored by the Gamecocks' Elijah Strong. The Sooners never led or were tied the entire game and were unable to get any kind of traction going until late in the first half. Trailing 28-14 at the 7:46 mark, OU outscored South Carolina 22-11 over the final eight minutes to pull within three points, 39-36, at halftime.
That was as close as Oklahoma would get the rest of the way as all five South Carolina starters scored in double figures. Meechie Johnson, the Gamecocks' leading scorer on the season, again led South Carolina with 20 points, with Strong and Kobe Knox combining for 35 more.
Xzayvier Brown led the Sooners with a game-high 22 points, his seventh game of at least 20 points out of the last 10. Sophomore Derrion Reid scored 20, including two of Oklahoma's five 3-pointers. Sixteen of Reid's 20 points came in the second half.
Oklahoma leaves one Columbia for another, traveling to Columbia, Missouri, for a showdown on Saturday with the Missouri Tigers (13-6, 3-3) and hoping to end the Sooners' five-game losing skid. It will be the first of two games vs. Mizzou this season. The Tigers come to Norman on March 6.
Three glaring takeaways from OU's latest hoops setback...five and counting:
South Carolina completely shuts down Sooners' 3-point offense
Thirty-five percent of Oklahoma's scoring this season have come from 3-point shots. OU is No. 4 in the SEC in made 3-point shots and ninth in 3-point shooting percentage (34.3). Against South Carolina, though, the Sooners were going up against the No. 1 team in the SEC in defending the 3-point line, and that difference popped out on the stat sheet in boldface. Oklahoma shot 27 3-balls in the game and made just five for 18.5%, the team's worst 3-point percentage of the season. Nijel Pack, Oklahoma's best 3-point shooter and one of the best in the country, was 0-for-7 and is just 2-for-17 in his last two games.
OU entering toughest stretch of the schedule with zero momentum
The Sooners are 1-5 and in last place in the SEC to begin conference play. That is considerable cause for concern, because the six opponents they have faced so far represent arguably the easiest part of the conference schedule. The next nine games on the OU schedule feature eight games against teams that at one time or another this season have been ranked in the Associated Press Top 25. The combined overall record of the Sooners' next nine opponents is 120-47. It only gets harder from here...OUch!
Porter Moser is losing control of this team, if he hasn't already
This is Porter Moser's worst conference start in his five seasons as Oklahoma head coach. Even though some are saying this is the best team he has had at OU, the results so far are worse than they were a year ago, when the Sooners went 20-14 overall, but just 6-18 in their first season in the SEC.
Moser's Sooner teams have never had a winning conference record. OU is 27-51 in conference games under Moser (three seasons in the Big 12 and now two in the SEC). The Sooners started out 0-4 in conference a year ago and are 1-5 so far this season, with five consecutive losses. This is only the second time in the last five seasons that Oklahoma has lost as many as five games in a row (OU lost five in a row in February last season).
Moser doesn't appear to be the solution for basketball success by the Oklahoma men, especially in this new era of college basketball. And if he's not the solution, that makes him a problem and not the right man for the job.