The Oklahoma men's basketball team is favored to win its next game, which is a rare occurrence these days.
The Sooners host LSU at 5 p.m. CT Saturday at Lloyd Noble Center. The Tigers are hovering right around .500 this season at 12-12 and are with South Carolina at the bottom of the SEC standings with just one conference win.
OU has its own struggles, though, also taking blow after blow from SEC heavyweights like LSU has been. The Sooners just finished a stretch of five straight games against ranked opponents, during which they went 1-4. Their only win was over Vanderbilt, which was no longer ranked after the loss.
The Sooners are desperate for a win. A loss against lowly LSU would be quite the needle to pop OU's NCAA Tournament bubble and send OU coach Porter Moser to free agency.
In his fourth season, Moser has never led the Sooners to the NCAA Tournament. Another March at home, and OU brass will be looking for a new men's basketball coach. And that's starting to look more and more likely.
Although a loss to LSU would trash the Sooners' season, a win would still be rather useless. OU's bubble probably popped after a blowout loss to Missouri on Wednesday, and a win against LSU wouldn't blow up another.
The Sooners have nothing but quality losses, but they need quality wins, and the Tigers aren't that.
LSU and South Carolina are the only two SEC teams outside of the top 50 in the NET Rankings (although OU is close at No. 49). At No. 82, that would make LSU a Quadrant 3 win for OU, comparable to the Sooners' wins against South Carolina and Georgia Tech. That's not impressing any committee.
The Sooners don't have a Quadrant 3 loss yet and only one Quadrant 2 deficit to Texas. The Sooners haven't notched a Quadrant 1 win since beating Arkansas on Jan. 25, and that's OU's only Quadrant 1 win since the calendar changed and SEC play started.
Opportunities will come, though. After a brief break against LSU, OU again plays five ranked opponents in a row, all of which are Quadrant 1 games. However, so far, the Sooners have done nothing with those opportunities at 1-7 in Quadrant 1 games against SEC squads and 0-6 against currently ranked conference teams.
OU cannot afford a loss to LSU, even if a win does nothing but keep the Sooners somewhat alive. Saturday does not matter, though, if the Sooners don't start getting quality wins instead of just quality losses by March.