OU's second season in the SEC has clarified one thing about the future of its men’s basketball program: The standard is higher.
OU athletic director Roger Denny on men’s basketball head coach Porter Moser
With the Sooners hovering near the bottom of the conference standings and attendance declining at Lloyd Noble Center, athletic director Roger Denny signaled that incremental progress isn’t the goal — sustained postseason relevance is. For Denny, that means aligning performance, resources and fan engagement to match the expectations of competing in one of college basketball’s premier conferences.
“I've seen what a really top-line basketball program can do for a university and an athletics program,” Denny said. “It's really coach (Jennie) Baranczyk in women's hoops has done this to a large degree, but we need it in men's hoops as well.”
Denny made clear that the standard for men’s basketball extends beyond incremental improvement. The focus, he said, is ensuring performance reflects the program’s resources and ambitions.
During his four-year tenure at Illinois, both basketball programs delivered postseason success. The men won a Big Ten regular-season title in 2022, reached the Elite Eight in 2024 and made the NCAA Tournament in all four seasons. The women made two NCAA Tournament appearances and won the 2024 Women’s Basketball Invitation Tournament. For Denny, that level of sustained relevance is the benchmark.
“The task at hand is understanding performance relative to resource and expectation,” Denny said. “We're evaluating on those three spectrums and really trying to understand what we need to do to get that program where it needs to be … coming from Illinois, I've got really, really high expectations.”
For Denny, matching expectations with performance extends beyond the roster — it includes creating an environment that transfers momentum from football to basketball season all the way into March.
“We run through November, December, where we're filling (Gaylord Family-Oklahoma Memorial Stadium) with 85,000 people. We need to make sure we're getting as many of those people to come back December through February and March, so that we can sustain the momentum of our entire program,” Denny said. “So we're evaluating what we can do to continue to attract people into the Lloyd Noble Center and begin building our runway into the new arena, and so you'll see from us some ideas on how we better engage fans in the arena.”
That momentum hasn’t translated on the men’s side. The average attendance for the 2024-25 season was 7,278 across 16 home games, including six against AP Top 25 opponents. This season, the Sooners average just 6,686 across 13 home games with only three Top 25 opponents played. While OU (14-14, 4-11 SEC) still has one more game left to play at home against Missouri (19-9, 9-6 SEC), an unranked matchup is unlikely to alter the season trend.
Last season, OU (20-14, 6-12 SEC) also struggled in conference play, losing four or more consecutive games twice. However, a 13-0 nonconference start and a three-game winning streak to close the season secured a No. 9 seed in the NCAA Tournament.
This year, the team endured a nine-game losing streak that pushed it out of tournament contention weeks ago. For Denny, evaluating performance and determining the appropriate amount of administrative support will be critical to help the Sooners return to March in the coming seasons.
The women’s program, meanwhile, is trending in a more positive direction. In its second year of SEC play, No. 7 OU women’s basketball (22-6, 10-5 SEC) has increased its average attendance from 5,101 to 5,367 and looks to make its fourth consecutive NCAA Tournament appearance. Denny pointed to the Sooners’ victory over then-No. 21 Tennessee (16-11, 8-7 SEC) that featured a near-capacity crowd as proof of what’s possible in terms of attendance.
“Sunday, we had an incredible women's hoops game,” Denny said. “ (The) place was full, almost entirely around the bowl, except for the student section. We’ve got to fix that. We’ve got to fix that, in a hurry, so we're going to get out and engage with the students and figure out what we can do to make sure they're coming out and supporting their peers on this campus.”
As OU continues its transition into the SEC, Denny’s message was clear: expectations won’t adjust to the standings.
Rebuilding home-court advantage, sustaining football momentum and evaluating administrative support are part of the process. But ultimately, the standard remains postseason success, and closing the gap between resources, performance and fan engagement will determine how quickly the Sooner men return to March relevance.
This story was edited by Laurie Jones.
Pieces from the OU Daily's sit-down with OU's new athletic director.
