Berry Tramel: Porter Moser's Sooners give hope to some NCAA Tournament success

Weve seen this plot before.

Porter Mosers Oklahoma Sooners basketball team wins a November tournament and soon enough goes into conference play with a hefty dose of optimism.

Were seeing this plot again.

And all we can say is, thank you very much, Porter.

State of Oklahoma mens basketball needs something to believe in.

Tulsa took a 4-7 record into a Saturday home game against Mississippi Valley State; among the conquerors of the Golden Hurricane are Southern U.

and Georgia State.

Oral Roberts is 3-8 and lost at home to Division II Rogers State.

OSU is 7-5 and has shown some life under new coach Steve Lutz, but the Cowboy roster looks unequipped to survive the rugged Big 12.

All against a backdrop of meager recent success in a state that for decades was a rousing contributor to March Madness.

Final Four runs for OU 1988, OSU 1995, OU 2002, OSU 2004 and OU 2016.

Regular trips to the Sweet 16 for the Sooners and Cowboys.

Three Sweet 16 trips for TU in a seven-year span (1994-00).

And ORUs Cinderella breakout in 2021, when the Golden Eagles beat both Ohio State and Florida in the NCAA Tournament, before a 72-70 loss to Arkansas in the Sweet 16.

That 2021 year, both OU and OSU won NCAA Tournament games.

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Kevin Stitt orders state agencies to end most remote work Berry Tramel: OSU football makeover, from players to coaches, is unprecedented Sink your teeth into 20 of Tulsa's best sandwiches But since then, the only state appearance in March Madness was by ORU in 2023, and the Golden Eagles were waxed 74-51 by Duke.

Heck, in the previous three seasons, OU, OSU nor Tulsa so much as finished in the upper half of their league standings.

Its been a dismal stretch of basketball.

But Wednesday night, OU freshman Jeremiah Fears changed the narrative.

The 18-year-old point guard scored 30 points on 8-of-12 shooting, including a 4-point play with 11.5 seconds left that gave the 14th-ranked Sooners an 87-86 victory over 24th-ranked Michigan.

Suddenly, the Sooners are 11-0, Fears is a rising star and OU is one of the talks of the college basketball nation.

Hey, meaningful hoops this winter might mean more than just the Thunder or womens basketball.

After our scrimmages in September and October, Coach (Moser) showed us were going to be the best team at getting better, OU senior Duke Miles said.

And when we address the issue with something, we really apply it to the next game.

Thats the biggest thing I notice with the team.

Now thats an interesting description.

The best team at getting better.

I like that.

We also havent seen much of that from the Sooners under Moser.

Last season, OU beat Iowa and Southern Cal in a tournament in La Jolla, California.

The Sooners started 10-0 and reached as high as seventh in The Associated Press poll.

OU finished 20-12 overall, 8-10 in the Big 12 and out of the 68-team NCAA bracket.

In 2022-23, OU beat Nebraska, Seton Hall and Ole Miss in Lake Buena Vista, Florida.

The Sooners started 7-2 but finished 15-17, 5-13.

In 2021-22, the Sooners beat East Carolina, Indiana State and Utah State in Conway, South Carolina.

They started 11-2 but finished 19-16, 7-11.

The difference this season could be that Michigan game.

OU went to the Bahamas and beat Providence 79-77, Arizona 82-77 and Louisville 69-64.

But they built upon that in Charlotte by beating a huge Wolverine team, led by two 7-footers, Vladislav Goldin and Danny Wolf.

Beating Michigan offers some confidence that OU can navigate the Southeastern Conference, which sports teams ranked 1 (Tennessee), 2 (Auburn), 4 (Kentucky), 6 (Alabama), 7 (Florida), 12 (Texas A&M), 14 (OU) and 17 (Ole Miss) in the AP poll.

Hey, SEC; when are you going to build a football league the basketball teams can be proud of? Anyway, a Sooner slide certainly is possible against that kind of competition.

Weve seen such results from Moser teams the previous three years.

But Jalon Moore, one of the few holdovers on this Sooner squad, says hes learned from the tribulations of a year ago.

Dont get comfortable, Moore said.

Dont feed into the outside noise.

Dont feed into the people telling us that, ay, were this good, were doing this and that.

You always gotta respect the game.

Respect the game regardless of who were playing or whatever our ranking is.

You gotta come out and you gotta perform every night, because thats this game.

Moser has surrounded Fears a plum recruit who was scheduled to graduate high school in 2025 before reclassifying last summer with veteran players.

Seniors Moore, averaging 17.4 points a game, and center Sam Godwin, 7.1 rebounds a game, were Sooners last season.

Moser brought in five senior transfers to pad out the roster: Miles, from High Point, is averaging 10.5 points a game; Kobe Elvis, Dayton, 9.8 points a game; Glenn Taylor, St.

Johns, 6.5; Brycen Goodine, Fairfield, 6.6; Mohamed Wague, Alabama, 3.0.

All those seniors, which include Moore and Godwin, mean Moser gets to do this makeover all over again next season.

Welcome to college basketball.

But at least OU has a chance to represent in March.

Perhaps with an advantageous seed in the NCAAs.

It wont be easy.

The Sooners schedule so far has been filled with quality names that arent necessarily quality teams.

In the NCAA Evaluation Tool rankings (Net), OU is 42nd.

Michigan is 24th and Arizona 33rd.

But Louisville is 62nd, Providence 76th, OSU 103rd and Georgia Tech 178th.

The Sooners have played four teams ranked in the 300s Alcorn State, East Texas A&M, Stetson and Lindenwood plus another, Central Arkansas, that plays in Lloyd Noble Center on Sunday.

That SEC gauntlet will provide plenty of top-30-type opponents, but the Sooners will have to beat their fair share.

A 7-11 SEC record could mean this plot ends like those previous Moser plots.

But maybe this Sooner team indeed is the best at getting better, and the state of Oklahoma will have a mens basketball team alive come spring..

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