The Zenith of OU Basketball: 1984-1990

[Sooner04]

I was driving I-35 the other day and my mind began to drift to OU Basketball and its past. I was thinking about how many great games I'd seen in Norman; how many fun trips I'd made on the road to see us play. Weekends in Kansas City, the Final Four in Atlanta.

Then I thought about how good we were in the '80s. I knew we were good, but then I started pouring over some stats in my head and realized that we were far better than I'd ever realized. My theory is, from the 1984 season through the 1990 season we were a Top 5 program. Don't believe me? Check out these stats:

Overall Record: 202-45 (.818 winning percentage)
Conference Record: 78-20 (.796 winning percentage)
Record in Norman: 108-2 (.982 winning percentage)
Wins over teams ranked in Top 10: 11 (rankings matchups unavailable prior to 1986.)
Wins over teams ranked #1: 4
Conference Championships: 4 ('84, '85, '88, '89)
Conference Tournament Championships: 3 ('85, '88, '90)
Big 8 Tournament Record: 15-4
NCAA Tournament Record: 14-7
NCAA #1 Seed: 4 ('85, '88, '89, '90)
Sweet 16: 4 ('85, '87, '88, '89)
Elite 8: 2 ('85, '88)
Final Four: 1 ('88)


So, I got to thinking....who was better than us? The National Champions from that period are as follows:

1984 - Georgetown
1985 - Villanova
1986 - Louisville
1987 - Indiana
1988 - Barf
1989 - Michigan
1990 - UNLV

Of that group, only Georgetown, Barf and UNLV made multiple Final Fours in that span (Georgetown in '84 and '85, Barf in '86 and '88 and UNLV in '87 and '90). I'd say all three were better than us, historically speaking, even though we had more than our share of success against Barf and against the Runnin' Rebels.

Indiana? Maybe, but they went to the NIT once during this run.
Louisville? Same deal, and we smoked them in Birmingham in '88.
Duke was rolling, they made the Final Four in '86, '88, '89 and '90, but they couldn't get over the hump until '91.

The rest are one-hit wonders. We stack up with just about everybody. We were a Top 5 program, and I don't think there's any debating that.

My question is this: why can't it happen again?


Thank you for your time.

 

[colston15]

I My question is this: why can't it happen again?

Because we didn't hire BCG.

 

[NMSooner'80]

Great research. Don't forget that we pummeled Louisville in the '84-85 season (in a "classic" where the four teams were OU, SMU, Chaminade and Louisville, and we were playing SMU and the Ville regardless) and Villanova in 1988 to get to the Final 4.

I was actually on a flight from the Bay Area to Salt Lake in August of '86 where the guy sitting behind me was Denny Crum. I forget how I wound up in a conversation with him, and I didn't bring up the 18-point OU win whatsoever from '84-85, but he was pretty gracious about it. He had a ring from the '80 championship, and I remarked how it looked a bit like the one on the cover of the '86 "season preview" edition of Sooners Illustrated, which I was reading on the flight.

As for Villanova, I really enjoyed that smackdown - and especially after hearing some comments about what a jerk Massimino was before that game, on OKC-area radio. It also was no big secret that the non-Oklahoma media was openly rooting for "Lovable Lil Rollie" against the Evil Tubbs.

This also came on the heels of that win over Louisville to get to the regional final, and I've repeated the the story before on how Billy got asked by some media-moron about why he "was trying to run up the score by shooting threes" at the end. It was a "kill the clock, afterthought toss - almost like the one that sent Princess Mulkey into orbit back in '06 when Ny Stevenson did it in Norman. Neither shot even went in, and neither was planned, for that matter.

 

[Dr Sleep]

I was driving I-35 the other day and my mind began to drift to OU Basketball and its past. I was thinking about how many great games I'd seen in Norman; how many fun trips I'd made on the road to see us play. Weekends in Kansas City, the Final Four in Atlanta.

Then I thought about how good we were in the '80s. I knew we were good, but then I started pouring over some stats in my head and realized that we were far better than I'd ever realized. My theory is, from the 1984 season through the 1990 season we were a Top 5 program. Don't believe me? Check out these stats:

Overall Record: 202-45 (.818 winning percentage)
Conference Record: 78-20 (.796 winning percentage)
Record in Norman: 108-2 (.982 winning percentage)
Wins over teams ranked in Top 10: 11 (rankings matchups unavailable prior to 1986.)
Wins over teams ranked #1: 4
Conference Championships: 4 ('84, '85, '88, '89)
Conference Tournament Championships: 3 ('85, '88, '90)
Big 8 Tournament Record: 15-4
NCAA Tournament Record: 14-7
NCAA #1 Seed: 4 ('85, '88, '89, '90)
Sweet 16: 4 ('85, '87, '88, '89)
Elite 8: 2 ('85, '88)
Final Four: 1 ('88)


So, I got to thinking....who was better than us? The National Champions from that period are as follows:

1984 - Georgetown
1985 - Villanova
1986 - Louisville
1987 - Indiana
1988 - Barf
1989 - Michigan
1990 - UNLV

Of that group, only Georgetown, Barf and UNLV made multiple Final Fours in that span (Georgetown in '84 and '85, Barf in '86 and '88 and UNLV in '87 and '90). I'd say all three were better than us, historically speaking, even though we had more than our share of success against Barf and against the Runnin' Rebels.

Indiana? Maybe, but they went to the NIT once during this run.
Louisville? Same deal, and we smoked them in Birmingham in '88.
Duke was rolling, they made the Final Four in '86, '88, '89 and '90, but they couldn't get over the hump until '91.

The rest are one-hit wonders. We stack up with just about everybody. We were a Top 5 program, and I don't think there's any debating that.

My question is this: why can't it happen again?


Thank you for your time.

Thanks. I think this is one of the reasons people want a return to uptempo BillyBall--because that is what we played during that time.

I went to all these games and loved it. I liked Kelvin's tenure but it wasn't as good or exciting. I gave up my season ticket last year.

 

[oSuJeff97]

The rest are one-hit wonders. We stack up with just about everybody. We were a Top 5 program, and I don't think there's any debating that.

My question is this: why can't it happen again?

I think the only argument as to why that "can't" happen again would be the level of competition in the Big 12/10/whatever.

In the 1984-1990 time frame, isn't it fair to say that the programs in the Big 8 broke out like this:

• Elite (recruits at a high level, threat to make deep tourney run nearly every year): OU, Kansas
  
• Very good (consistently make the tournament/occasional deep run): Missouri, K-State
  
• Good (makes the tournament sporadically, mixed in w/ NIT): Iowa State
  
• Inconsistent to mediocre (sporadically make post-season, some losing records): Oklahoma State, Colorado, Nebraska

I would say the league right now looks like this (taking out CU and Neb.), using the same criteria as above for elite, very good, etc.:

• Elite: Kansas, Texas
• Very Good: Texas A&M, Missouri, Kansas State
• Good: Baylor, Oklahoma State
• Inconsistent to mediocre: Oklahoma, Iowa State, Texas Tech

Back in that 1984-90 time span, you had basically half of the league being pretty inconsistent, with OU, KU and Missouri clearly being the class of the league. So OU had to compete (essentially) with those two schools to claim Big 8 superiority and assert themselves on the national stage.

In the state of the league today, you would have to climb past 3 programs that are consistently making the tournament, plus Baylor and OSU, to crack that top 3 with KU and Texas. And let's not forget that BCG is going to have Tech significantly improving over the next few years.

Not saying it can't be done, but I just think the across-the-board competitive level of the Big 12/10/whatever is going to be much higher than the Big 8 was in the mid-to-late part of the 1980s. That will make it much more difficult for any one program to crack that elite group.

 

[mattham4]

Of course it was...I was there from '85 to '89 and they had to keep me entertained.