Sooners have started season with at least 10 straight wins 8 times, but never back to back

Oklahoma is 10-0 after a Bedlam win.

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Oklahoma notched its third straight win over rival Oklahoma State in the 250th edition of the Bedlam basketball series Saturday night.

More important, though, the 13th-ranked Sooners extended their winning streak to 10 games to start the season. It gave the OU men a program-record of back-to-back years of 10 consecutive wins to open a season.

Ten straight wins to begin a college basketball season is an impressive achievement for any program. It marks the ninth time in 117 years of Sooner basketball history that an OU team has begun a season with at least 10 straight wins.

All of those double-digit season openings have come since the 1980s, which for all practical purposes was the beginning of the modern era of Oklahoma basketball, ushered in by legendary head coach Billy Tubbs, who forever changed the style and character of Sooner basketball.

As impressive as that is, however, Oklahoma has opened a season with more than 10 consecutive wins four different times. Prior to 1980, seven wins were the most OU ever posted to begin a season. That was over seven decades, and the Sooners accomplished it twice, in 1972-73 and 1976-77. Those came under two different head coaches: John MacLeod ('72--'73) and Joe Ramsey ('76-77).

Tubbs' 1985-86 Oklahoma team opened the season with 17 consecutive wins. That Sooner team, led by Darryl "Choo" Kennedy and Tim McCalister, did not lose a game until late January, falling 98-92 at Kansas.

Tubbs also had Sooner teams that had 14, 12 and 10 straight wins to begin seasons. His 1987-88 team that included Stacey King, Mookie Blaylock and Harvey Grant, all of whom went on to play in the NBA, started the season with 14 consecutive victories. That team finished the season going 36-4. Its final loss came to Kansas, 83-79, in the 1988 national championship game.

In 1989-90, Tubbs led the Sooners to a 27-5 record after opening the season with 12 straight wins. During the course of that season, Oklahoma defeated No. 1 Missouri followed by No. 1 Kansas over a 48-hour period, both wins by over 20 points.

The 1991-92 Oklahoma team, also coached by Tubbs, opened the season with a 10-game winning streak.

Tubbs came very close to having five Sooner teams open the new season with at least 10 straight wins. His 1983-84 team split the first two games of the season before reeling off 11 consecutive wins.

Kelvin Sampson opened the 2003-04 OU season with 10 wins in a row. Jeff Capel's 2008-09 team, with eventual Naismith College Player of the Year Blake Griffin, began the season with a dozen wins right out of the chute. That team ended the year with a 30-6 record and a trip to the Elite Eight.

In Buddy Hield's senior season, the 2015-16 Oklahoma team, coached by veteran head coach Lon Kruger, won its first 12 games before losing to Kansas 109-106 in three overtimes. Hield scored 46 points in the game, including eight 3-pointers.

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