As OU men’s basketball (12-12, 2-9 SEC) enters the final stretch of the regular season, head coach Porter Moser believes that there's still a path to the NCAA Tournament despite the team’s shortcomings in conference play.
“Our sightline can’t be anything past Georgia,” said Moser. “As a leader, you always have to have a transfer of belief. There’s always a path. There’s a path, and that path starts with one game at a time and that's Georgia.”
In ESPN’s latest Bracketology, Missouri (17-7, 7-4 SEC) has the lowest NCAA Net Ranking of any Power-4 team currently projected to make the NCAA Tournament coming in at No. 57. OU currently sits at No. 73, just behind other Power-4 teams like Arizona State (71), Oklahoma State (70), Stanford (69), Syracuse (68), Wake Forest (66) and LSU (64), and has an opportunity to make a jump in the rankings with a win over Georgia (17-7, 5-6 SEC) who is currently sitting at No. 35 in the Net and has floated in and out of the AP Top-25 this season.
The Sooners already secured a win against Vanderbilt (20-4, 7-4 SEC), who sits at No. 19 in the AP rankings and No. 15 in the Net. Still, OU must continue to prove that it can win against tournament-caliber opponents to enter NCAA Tournament conversations.
Moser said that complacency is not an option after the Sooners’ first ranked win if they want to prove they can string together quality victories down the stretch.
“I was happy for the result,” Moser said. “Moving forward this week, I wanted the theme not to be relief. We can't just be all relieved we won. No, the foot's got to go on the gas pedal harder.”
Looking ahead, every remaining opponent for the Sooners is ranked ahead of them in the NCAA Net, giving them ample opportunity to climb the rankings and make a late-season run before the SEC and NCAA Tournaments. Six of the seven remaining games, Georgia, Tennessee (17-7, 7-4 SEC), Texas A&M (17-7, 7-4 SEC), Auburn (14-10, 5-6 SEC), Missouri and Texas (15-9, 6-5 SEC), feature teams projected to make the 68-team field in March, giving OU a steep challenge in the coming weeks.
For OU, the stakes are clear from here: Beat Georgia, and tournament hopes remain faintly alive. Lose, and the Sooners likely would need a deep run in the SEC Tournament to keep hopes of an at-large bid a possibility.
The Sooners’ matchup against Georgia comes at 2:30 p.m. Saturday at the Lloyd Noble Center on the SEC Network.
This story was edited by Laurie Jones.
