Prior to the start of the 2024-25 college basketball season, you could count on one hand the number of experts who believed the Oklahoma men would come anywhere close to cracking the upper half of the SEC standings, let alone receiving an NCAA Tournament bid.
Most every college basketball pundit and preview magazine had the Sooners missing out on March Madness -- at least insofar as the NCAA Tournament is concerned -- for a fourth straight year. The last time Oklahoma participated in the Big Dance was in 2021, Lon Kruger's last of 10 seasons as the OU head coach.
The general impression among Sooner fans when it first became known that Oklahoma would be joining the SEC after nearly an eight-decade affiliation with the Big 12 and all of its previous iteration was that Oklahoma would be better off in the sport of basketball competing in the SEC rather than in the Big 12, which, like the SEC is in football, is considered the strongest major conference in college basketball.
Well, Sooner fans, welcome to the SEC. Oklahoma was picked to finish 15th out of 16 SEC teams this season in the SEC Preseason Media Poll and eight SEC teams are ranked this week in the Associated Press Top 25, including three in the top five.
Surprise, surprise, though! The Sooners are one of those eight ranked SEC teams. After starting out the season with eight consecutive wins, the second consecutive season the OU men have gone undefeated through at least the first eight games, and defeating a strong field in capturing the Battle 4 Atlantis championship in the Bahamas, the 2024-25 edition of Sooner basketball is starting to turn some heads and get national recognition.
If you are like me and follow ESPN's Joe Lunardi and his Bracketology projections throughout the college basketball season, you would know that Oklahoma was nowhere to be found in Lunardi's or any other 2025 NCAA Tournament projections. Entering Week 5 of the college season, I'm happy to report that is no longer the case.
This week, Lunardi has the Sooner men as a No. 8 seed and one of 12 (not a misprint) teams from the SEC to make it into this year's Big Dance. Obviously it is still very early in the season with three full months remaining, and things will certainly change as the season progresses, but we'll take any recognition we can get for Oklahoma men's basketball anytime we can get it.
Beggars shouldn't be choosers, but all things considered, the Sooners would probably like to avoid the dreaded 8/9 seed line, but not , of course, if it would mean being left out of the NCAA Tournament.
The trouble with being a No. 8 or 9 seed is that if you're fortunate to win your opening round game, your reward for doing so is a second-round matchup with the region's No. 1 seed. That is precisely what happened in OU's last trip to the NCAA Tournament in 2021. The Sooners, the No. 8 seed, defeated No. 9 Missouri 72-68 and then went up against top-seeded Gonzaga in round two. Austin Reaves (now with the Los Angeles Lakers) scored 27 points for the Sooners, but it was in a losing cause as Gonzaga prevailed, 87-71.
Now in his fourth season in Norman, Porter Moser is still looking for his first NCAA Tournament appearance as the Sooners' head coach. He owns a 62-45 record at Oklahoma, but has had the misfortune of having to deal with huge roster turnover every year because of players out of eligibility and the ubiquitous transfer portal.
The OU head coach had the same issue in building the Oklahoma roster for 2024-25. He lost three starters off of last season's team and seven players total. Three were out of eligibility and four entered the transfer portal.
For 2024-25, Moser welcomed 10 new players, seven transfers and three members of the 2024 recruiting class. Early on, it appears he has a slam dunk with this year's group.