Sooner04
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- Joined
- May 15, 2009
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DISCLAIMER: These thoughts are not from a professional. These thoughts are from an unabashed Sooner BBall fanatic whose glasses are tinted heavily crimson. I’m not a coach, I’m not an analyst, I’m just a guy who lives and dies with every shot. My knowledge of the X’s and O’s of the sport is tenuous at best. My predictions often prove folly. I once fell hard for Ray Willis. But I do love my Sooner hoops, often too much. Feel free to critique but, please, be gentle.
Spirits were high for me and my traveling companions on September 16, 1998: for the first time since November 24, 1995, our Sooner football team would take the field as an above .500 football team. Buoyed by backup-QB Patrick Fletcher's surprising performance against North Texas in Norman, our "Wishbone" attack seemed poised to make it a 2-0 start in 1998 under third-year coach John Blake. 2-0 could lead to 3-0 with California on the docket at home, and an unblemished conference slate might lead to our first bowl appearance since the disastrous Copper Bowl of 1994. What followed that rainy night in the Fort of Worth was 58 minutes of the most inept offensive football possibly ever played. The fact that we managed to score ten points in the final 140 seconds thanks to a series of mind-bending Horned Frog mistakes still brings me pause all these years later. Soaked, smiling, and now forever linked to my traveling companions with a catchphrase that takes us all back to that turd floater (What time is it in Fort Worth? Ten to nine.) we began the journey back to Ardmore to rendezvous at the home of my grandparents. I expected my grandfather, a Sooner backer who traced his fanaticism to Tom Stidham, to greet me with a celebratory high-five. Instead, I caught both barrels of the heavy artillery. "Don't you realize that every piece of good fortune opens us up to another year of this ****? We'll never make it with this guy. Ever. We need to lose out. He needs to be gone. Now."
Apples aren't oranges. OU Football is not OU Basketball. My grandfather has since passed away, but I know he wouldn't compare John Blake to Porter Moser. Neither would I. But the sentiment stands. Are we going to allow another dismal conference showing to pass by because of a one-and-done NCAA appearance? Are we going to allow another wasted hot start to be forgotten just because we finally beat a lousy Texas team for the first time in eight tries? Are we going to prop up mediocrity even though a top-30 player luckily fell into our lap in the waning days of a recruiting cycle? I hope not. I've seen enough....and I'll tell you why.
CONFERENCE CELLAR DWELLERS:
Yes, the Big 12 was tough. Yes, the SEC was tough. Other teams can navigate the gauntlet of these slates to the tune of .500 ball. Why can't we? When you crunch the numbers, it paints a pretty dreadful picture.
2022: 7-11
2023: 5-13
2024: 8-10
2025: 6-12
Awful. But let's look at it another way. Let's take those final standings and break them down into wins, losses and ties. If your conference record is better than somebody, that's a win. Worse, that's a loss. Even, kiss your sister. It's not rocket science. Here we go:
2022: 7-11 (2-6-1)
2023: 5-13 (0-8-1)
2024: 8-10 (4-8-1)
2025: 6-12 (2-12-1)
In four years of conference play we are 8-34-4 against our brethren. You don't need to read Euclid to know we suck. The proof is in the pudding. Now, I admit that I'm a little biased toward the conference metrics because I was a long-time conference tournament partaker. I loved going to Kansas City. I loved interacting with our friends from across the midwest. What I did not like was being marooned in that God-forsaken Wednesday night slate in a half-empty gym playing the dregs of the league in front of a bunch of drunks who wandered into the building off the streets. The pinheads running the NCAA Tournament bend over backwards to reward crappy teams like us by throwing bones to the bottom feeders of the power leagues, and we still can't do anything with it. I get so aggravated reading this board in March (We should be in! We deserve to go!) WE are lousy! We have a minimum of 18 chances to show the basketball-caring public that we're worth a damn every year and we steer straight into the iceberg EVERY SINGLE TIME!
MOMENTUM:
Our fans suck. We don't deserve to be good. Blah, blah, blah. Nonsense. What OU fans are is fickle, and if you don't win they will stay away in droves. I've been a Sooner fan my entire life, and I've sat through games at Owen Field where the south endzone was stuffed with soldiers from Fort Sill or horny teens in FCA shirts. You have to win games. You have to give fans a reason to show up. If you don't, they will not bother. And Porter Moser's Sooners have NEVER wasted an opportunity to turn momentum into an egg-laying extravaganza. Let's have a look:
2022: 7-1. At home, coming off a great win against Florida. Barf our guts out against a 14-19 Butler team.
2023: Fresh off smoking #2 Alabama, the ice storm hits. Fans are in free. The Aggies are in town. The house is full. We never lead, paving the way for O-State's first Super Sweep of us since 1965.
2024: 3-2 in the league after a great non-con. A road win in Cincy. Horns in Lloyd Noble. Place is packed. Never led. Boatraced.
2025: Phenomenal non-con. Great wins galore. Blow an 18-point lead to the other Aggies and pave the way for yet another batch of February Faceplants (patent pending).
You can dig as deep into your memory as you'd like to go, and you'll find a toe-stubbing around every corner. You'll step on that stray Lego with your barefeet without fail. There's a four-year CV chock full of them.
CLOSE GAME CALAMITIES:
In his 16 seasons as head coach, Barry Switzer lost one game decided by three points or less. ONE. And even though we fumbled the ball 147 times that day, we were still in position to win the game until Billy Sims put the ball on the turf three yards from paydirt. In games decided by three points or less (or in Overtime), Porter Moser is 12-20. That's the mark of a coach right there. Not how many fans show up to a 50-year-old arena. Not how much NIL is corralled by Butler or Sam Houston State or TCU or Providence or UCF. No, when the chips are down, do you get the guys in the right position to make a play? Or do you let a former starter rip your guts out twice in two weeks? Or do you micro manage to death in the Bahamas and turn a sure victory into a nailbiter? Or do you blow a big lead? Or maroon a guy on the bench for 2/3 of the season? Or turn your roster into a revolving door of hired guns? Whatever it is, the die is cast at 12-20. Might the 2022 team have snagged a First Four invite with wins over Utah State and Butler instead of losses? Would two tourney appearances out of four instead of 25% success rate another year? In 2024 it was no small feat to score 84 at home against Taco Tech or 85 against Kelvin's #1 Cougars. One would think that would be enough.....instead both are close losses. Again and again and again.
GETTING OLD THE RIGHT WAY:
We will never get over the hump with this line of roster thinking. Losing seven, eight, nine guys every year and scouring the land to pick up mid-major castoffs has no future. But a third year or Oweh or Uzan would damn sure help. You find a way to keep Kaden Cooper on campus. You play Bijan Cortes and you let him figure it out. You keep Jalen Hill around and let him lead. You let the young players set the standard. You do everything in your power to keep Dayton Forsythe in the fold. You offer his brother. You build from within and you get old with YOUR guys, not the rando on school three in year four. We will never be able to recruit well enough picking and choosing amongst the mercenaries. Ever. Stop throwing life preservers to these rim protectors from Parts Unknown and put together a basketball team! If you've got Alston Mason on your team, use him! Good grief.
DON'T LET A HOT STRETCH DISTRACT YOU:
Every single person in the program should be commended for playing well down the stretch when the whole operation could've easily gone sideways. After getting our doors blown off in Gainesville, the team could've easily packed it in and wished us all good tidings into the abyss. But they did not. They played great. They played hard and they put forth a product of which every Sooner basketball could be proud. But don't let it distract you from the overall narrative of the Moser era. Four years in and this is the high-water mark: a 9-seed in the NCAA Tournament in a season where we won precisely 1/3rd of our conference games. That sucks. I don't care what the NET or the RPI or the WAB or any of these other cockamamie metrics schemed up by some pervert in Mom's basement states: we simply are not good enough. Perhaps I am a cynic, but I feel we wringed every ounce of good fortune that fell into our laps in the form of Jeremiah Fears. Can you imagine if we hitched our whole season onto Jalon Moore getting 18 and 8 every night? I tell you what we'd be: 10-20. And then none of these conversations are happening. We'd be moving on, which is what I think we should still do now. I was born under the sign of Tisdale, and I spent the first 34 years of my life knowing we'd put it together once every couple of years. The NCAA began seeding teams in 1985, and from that year until 2016 our program NEVER went more than four seasons without being a 5-seed once. Our droughts (1996-1999 and 2010-2013) were followed by massive success. We're now on year 9 without a top-5 seed, with no end in sight. I don't expect a Final Four every year. I don't expect conference titles every year. But what I do expect is a chance at a Sweet 16 once every four or five seasons. Since Moser's arrival, 70 different D-1 programs have won a game in the Field of 64. We have not.
I welcome your rebuttals. I would love to see the bright lights that lie ahead. I welcome the plan moving forward, assuming there is one. I just don't see it. I see a roster in complete flux that will be filled next year by a bunch of guys on school three looking for a chance to play in the nation's premier basketball conference. What do we do? What do teams dread about playing Oklahoma? Certainly not our ferocious rebounding. Absolutely not our vaunted offensive sets. Is this it? Another season near the bottom of the league. Another date with a bottom feeder in Nashville on night one of the conference tournament? Is this the ceiling? A 9-seed following a 6-12 slate? I don't think this is good enough, and I believe it's time for a change. I've seen enough. Have you?
Thank you for your time.
Spirits were high for me and my traveling companions on September 16, 1998: for the first time since November 24, 1995, our Sooner football team would take the field as an above .500 football team. Buoyed by backup-QB Patrick Fletcher's surprising performance against North Texas in Norman, our "Wishbone" attack seemed poised to make it a 2-0 start in 1998 under third-year coach John Blake. 2-0 could lead to 3-0 with California on the docket at home, and an unblemished conference slate might lead to our first bowl appearance since the disastrous Copper Bowl of 1994. What followed that rainy night in the Fort of Worth was 58 minutes of the most inept offensive football possibly ever played. The fact that we managed to score ten points in the final 140 seconds thanks to a series of mind-bending Horned Frog mistakes still brings me pause all these years later. Soaked, smiling, and now forever linked to my traveling companions with a catchphrase that takes us all back to that turd floater (What time is it in Fort Worth? Ten to nine.) we began the journey back to Ardmore to rendezvous at the home of my grandparents. I expected my grandfather, a Sooner backer who traced his fanaticism to Tom Stidham, to greet me with a celebratory high-five. Instead, I caught both barrels of the heavy artillery. "Don't you realize that every piece of good fortune opens us up to another year of this ****? We'll never make it with this guy. Ever. We need to lose out. He needs to be gone. Now."
Apples aren't oranges. OU Football is not OU Basketball. My grandfather has since passed away, but I know he wouldn't compare John Blake to Porter Moser. Neither would I. But the sentiment stands. Are we going to allow another dismal conference showing to pass by because of a one-and-done NCAA appearance? Are we going to allow another wasted hot start to be forgotten just because we finally beat a lousy Texas team for the first time in eight tries? Are we going to prop up mediocrity even though a top-30 player luckily fell into our lap in the waning days of a recruiting cycle? I hope not. I've seen enough....and I'll tell you why.
CONFERENCE CELLAR DWELLERS:
Yes, the Big 12 was tough. Yes, the SEC was tough. Other teams can navigate the gauntlet of these slates to the tune of .500 ball. Why can't we? When you crunch the numbers, it paints a pretty dreadful picture.
2022: 7-11
2023: 5-13
2024: 8-10
2025: 6-12
Awful. But let's look at it another way. Let's take those final standings and break them down into wins, losses and ties. If your conference record is better than somebody, that's a win. Worse, that's a loss. Even, kiss your sister. It's not rocket science. Here we go:
2022: 7-11 (2-6-1)
2023: 5-13 (0-8-1)
2024: 8-10 (4-8-1)
2025: 6-12 (2-12-1)
In four years of conference play we are 8-34-4 against our brethren. You don't need to read Euclid to know we suck. The proof is in the pudding. Now, I admit that I'm a little biased toward the conference metrics because I was a long-time conference tournament partaker. I loved going to Kansas City. I loved interacting with our friends from across the midwest. What I did not like was being marooned in that God-forsaken Wednesday night slate in a half-empty gym playing the dregs of the league in front of a bunch of drunks who wandered into the building off the streets. The pinheads running the NCAA Tournament bend over backwards to reward crappy teams like us by throwing bones to the bottom feeders of the power leagues, and we still can't do anything with it. I get so aggravated reading this board in March (We should be in! We deserve to go!) WE are lousy! We have a minimum of 18 chances to show the basketball-caring public that we're worth a damn every year and we steer straight into the iceberg EVERY SINGLE TIME!
MOMENTUM:
Our fans suck. We don't deserve to be good. Blah, blah, blah. Nonsense. What OU fans are is fickle, and if you don't win they will stay away in droves. I've been a Sooner fan my entire life, and I've sat through games at Owen Field where the south endzone was stuffed with soldiers from Fort Sill or horny teens in FCA shirts. You have to win games. You have to give fans a reason to show up. If you don't, they will not bother. And Porter Moser's Sooners have NEVER wasted an opportunity to turn momentum into an egg-laying extravaganza. Let's have a look:
2022: 7-1. At home, coming off a great win against Florida. Barf our guts out against a 14-19 Butler team.
2023: Fresh off smoking #2 Alabama, the ice storm hits. Fans are in free. The Aggies are in town. The house is full. We never lead, paving the way for O-State's first Super Sweep of us since 1965.
2024: 3-2 in the league after a great non-con. A road win in Cincy. Horns in Lloyd Noble. Place is packed. Never led. Boatraced.
2025: Phenomenal non-con. Great wins galore. Blow an 18-point lead to the other Aggies and pave the way for yet another batch of February Faceplants (patent pending).
You can dig as deep into your memory as you'd like to go, and you'll find a toe-stubbing around every corner. You'll step on that stray Lego with your barefeet without fail. There's a four-year CV chock full of them.
CLOSE GAME CALAMITIES:
In his 16 seasons as head coach, Barry Switzer lost one game decided by three points or less. ONE. And even though we fumbled the ball 147 times that day, we were still in position to win the game until Billy Sims put the ball on the turf three yards from paydirt. In games decided by three points or less (or in Overtime), Porter Moser is 12-20. That's the mark of a coach right there. Not how many fans show up to a 50-year-old arena. Not how much NIL is corralled by Butler or Sam Houston State or TCU or Providence or UCF. No, when the chips are down, do you get the guys in the right position to make a play? Or do you let a former starter rip your guts out twice in two weeks? Or do you micro manage to death in the Bahamas and turn a sure victory into a nailbiter? Or do you blow a big lead? Or maroon a guy on the bench for 2/3 of the season? Or turn your roster into a revolving door of hired guns? Whatever it is, the die is cast at 12-20. Might the 2022 team have snagged a First Four invite with wins over Utah State and Butler instead of losses? Would two tourney appearances out of four instead of 25% success rate another year? In 2024 it was no small feat to score 84 at home against Taco Tech or 85 against Kelvin's #1 Cougars. One would think that would be enough.....instead both are close losses. Again and again and again.
GETTING OLD THE RIGHT WAY:
We will never get over the hump with this line of roster thinking. Losing seven, eight, nine guys every year and scouring the land to pick up mid-major castoffs has no future. But a third year or Oweh or Uzan would damn sure help. You find a way to keep Kaden Cooper on campus. You play Bijan Cortes and you let him figure it out. You keep Jalen Hill around and let him lead. You let the young players set the standard. You do everything in your power to keep Dayton Forsythe in the fold. You offer his brother. You build from within and you get old with YOUR guys, not the rando on school three in year four. We will never be able to recruit well enough picking and choosing amongst the mercenaries. Ever. Stop throwing life preservers to these rim protectors from Parts Unknown and put together a basketball team! If you've got Alston Mason on your team, use him! Good grief.
DON'T LET A HOT STRETCH DISTRACT YOU:
Every single person in the program should be commended for playing well down the stretch when the whole operation could've easily gone sideways. After getting our doors blown off in Gainesville, the team could've easily packed it in and wished us all good tidings into the abyss. But they did not. They played great. They played hard and they put forth a product of which every Sooner basketball could be proud. But don't let it distract you from the overall narrative of the Moser era. Four years in and this is the high-water mark: a 9-seed in the NCAA Tournament in a season where we won precisely 1/3rd of our conference games. That sucks. I don't care what the NET or the RPI or the WAB or any of these other cockamamie metrics schemed up by some pervert in Mom's basement states: we simply are not good enough. Perhaps I am a cynic, but I feel we wringed every ounce of good fortune that fell into our laps in the form of Jeremiah Fears. Can you imagine if we hitched our whole season onto Jalon Moore getting 18 and 8 every night? I tell you what we'd be: 10-20. And then none of these conversations are happening. We'd be moving on, which is what I think we should still do now. I was born under the sign of Tisdale, and I spent the first 34 years of my life knowing we'd put it together once every couple of years. The NCAA began seeding teams in 1985, and from that year until 2016 our program NEVER went more than four seasons without being a 5-seed once. Our droughts (1996-1999 and 2010-2013) were followed by massive success. We're now on year 9 without a top-5 seed, with no end in sight. I don't expect a Final Four every year. I don't expect conference titles every year. But what I do expect is a chance at a Sweet 16 once every four or five seasons. Since Moser's arrival, 70 different D-1 programs have won a game in the Field of 64. We have not.
I welcome your rebuttals. I would love to see the bright lights that lie ahead. I welcome the plan moving forward, assuming there is one. I just don't see it. I see a roster in complete flux that will be filled next year by a bunch of guys on school three looking for a chance to play in the nation's premier basketball conference. What do we do? What do teams dread about playing Oklahoma? Certainly not our ferocious rebounding. Absolutely not our vaunted offensive sets. Is this it? Another season near the bottom of the league. Another date with a bottom feeder in Nashville on night one of the conference tournament? Is this the ceiling? A 9-seed following a 6-12 slate? I don't think this is good enough, and I believe it's time for a change. I've seen enough. Have you?
Thank you for your time.
