That's your opinion, but I doubt you can produce statistical evidence that the vast majority of Sooner fans expected us to be bad that year. They certainly didn't expect us to finish below .500 -- or if they did, they were remarkably quiet about it.
AJ, TG, Michael Neal, Nate Carter, Longar, Crocker -- sorry, but even given that several of those players were young, that's not a sub-.500 squad. And if it's not, then finishing 16-15 is no great accomplishment.
If the youth on that team was an issue, then how can we assume Clark and TJ will contribute right away, as many seem to?
I make it a point never to compare Sampson and Capel -- the Sampson haters get their backs up, and one gets accused of wanting Sampson back, which I most definitely do not. But there's no doubt in my mind that if Sampson had coached that team, we'd have made the NIT at the very least.
This continuing insistence that that team was devoid of talent only started the last year or so. Few were saying at the time that we didn't have enough talent to win twenty games.