It hasn't been a season to remember for the Oklahoma men's basketball team, but there's still business to take care of if the Sooners want to avoid finishing out tying their worst conference mark in nearly 60 years.
Auburn (15-12, 6-8) pays a visit to Lloyd Noble Center on Tuesday, the eighth and next-to-last SEC team to do so this troublesome season. Five of the previous seven have come away with victories, something that would have been unfathomable in years past. During the Billy Tubbs and Kelvin Sampson years, the LNC was considered one of the country's toughest places to play for visiting teams.
Oklahoma hosting Auburn while trying to avoid historically bad conference season
In five seasons under head coach Porter Moser, Oklahoma is 56-27 in games played at the LNC, a winning percentage of .675. The Sooners are just 2-5 in conference games at home this season and were 3-6 at home against SEC teams last season, OU's first as a member of the SEC.
OU comes into the Auburn game with a discouraging 3-11 conference record and 12-13 overall, and in danger of ending the season with the worst conference record in almost six decades. The last time OU won only three conference games in a season was in 1968-69.
The Sooners have four more chances to avoid making the wrong kind of history, and it starts on Tuesday night against the Auburn Tigers, who will be making their first trip to Norman after completing a dramatic 75-74 home win over Kentucky that snapped a five-game losing streak.
Tuesday night's game will be just the sixth meeting all-time in basketball between Oklahoma and Auburn. The Tigers are 4-1 against the Sooners, including a 98-70 victory at Auburn last season.
The game will be televised on ESPNU at 8 p.m. CT on Tuesday night. Roy Philpott will be on play-by-play with Daymeon Fishback providing analysis.
Following Auburn, the Sooners will finish out the season with a final home game against Missouri on March 3 sandwiched between weekend road contests at LSU and Texas.
What to know about Auburn
Mississippi State transfer Keyshawn Hall is one of four Auburn starters scoring in double digits. Hall is averaging 20.6 points to lead the team. He scored 29 points and pulled down 10 rebounds in a win last week over Mississippi State. That was his 15th game this season scoring 20 or more points. His 20.6 average ranks fourth in the SEC.
Sophomore guard Tahaad Pettiford is Auburn's second leading scorer. He has scored 20 or more points in each of the last four games and is averaging 24.0 points and 5.5 rebounds per game over that stretch. In 14 away games this season, Pettiford is averaging 18.6 points and is shooting 44.1%.
Auburn is just 2-6 in true road games this season. One of those two wins, however, was a 76-67 road victory over then-No. 16 Florida, which currently leads the SEC standings.
The Tigers rank No. 33 in the NET rankings and No. 34 in the KenPom rankings. By contrast, Oklahoma ranks 71st and 58th, respectively, in those two national rankings.
What to know about Oklahoma
Sooner guard Nijel Pack leads the SEC and ranks 10th nationally in made three-point field-goal percentage at 44.1%. The Miami transfer's 86 made three-point shots also leads the SEC.
Oklahoma's kryptonite this season has been its overall inefficiency on the defensive end of the court and the inability to get defensive stops at critical points in the game. Oklahoma ranks 276th out of 365 teams in defensive efficiency this season, according to TeamRankings.com. Auburn is actually as bad as OU in this category. The Tigers rank 278th.
Pack and Xzayvier Brown continue to lead the Sooners in the scoring column, averaging 15.7 and 15.5 points per game, respectively, with four starters scoring in double figures. OU is No. 33 in the country in offensive efficiency, but shot just 32.8% in the home loss to Texas A&M over the weekend. That was the Sooners' lowest shooting percentage of the season. The Sooners average 46.3% for the season.
The Sooners have held double-digit leads in five of their last 10 games, but have come away victorious in just two of the five.
Prediction
These two teams are surprisingly close in several statistical areas. Auburn has fallen into a recent pattern of getting off to slow starts. The Sooners need to jump on this tendency and keep their foot down and the pressure on, making the Tigers work for everything they get.
With only two home games remaining, this is one they can and should be able to put in the win column, but only if they're able to keep it close and play through the finish line.