Just a week after seemingly saving his job as Oklahoma's men's basketball coach, Porter Moser might be leaving the Sooners anyway.
Speculation continues to grow from multiple outlets, including CBS Sports, that Moser is a serious candidate to become the next head coach for the Villanova Wildcats.
Villanova just fired Kyle Neptune on Saturday after the Wildcats went 19-14 this season and failed to reach the NCAA Tournament. In three seasons at the helm, Neptune never got Villanova into the NCAA Tournament, which is clearly the standard for a program with such rich tradition.
However, Moser also failed to get the Sooners dancing during his first three seasons in charge, which is why his seat at OU was so hot all season. To Moser's credit, OU was at least the first team left out of the field of 68 in two of those three years.
OU is 74–58 in four seasons under Moser, but the .357 winning percentage in conference games is the worst by a coach in program history this century. Considering those numbers and the big picture, Moser's seat still could be hot in Norman.
The Sooners finally got into the NCAA Tournament this year after a late-season surge in which they won three games in a row within a week. OU got the 9-seed in the West Region of the NCAA Tournament and will play the 8-seed UConn Huskies in the first round on Friday night.
Including this season, Moser has made three trips to the NCAA Tournament. He got Loyola Chicago dancing twice and had tremendous success once there. Moser led the Ramblers to the Final Four in 2018, then to the Sweet 16 in 2021 right before leaving for OU.
Moser would have seemed like a logical candidate for Villanova at the time OU hired him, but now, Moser's name coming up seems like a head-scratcher considering what he's done with his first opportunity at somewhere with real expectations, which he has failed to meet.