OU men’s basketball (21-16) fell short of its first postseason championship with a 89-82 overtime loss to West Virginia (21-14) in the College Basketball Crown Championship game on Sunday in Las Vegas.
The Sooners nearly turned a season of late-game struggles and a nine-game losing streak into a storybook finish, coming up just 88 seconds short of championship hardware and $300,000 in NIL money for head coach Porter Moser’s squad.
What could have been a fitting sendoff for one of college basketball’s top 3-point shooters was eclipsed by West Virginia’s offensive surge. Senior guard Nijel Pack tallied his 436th career make from beyond the arc against WVU, moving into sole ownership of 12th place on the Division I men’s basketball career 3-pointers list.
However, Mountaineers senior guard Honor Huff stole the spotlight from deep, cashing in eight makes, which added 24 points to his career-high 38 points on the night.
Huff caught fire early, going five-of-five from deep in the first 10 minutes, helping WVU build an early 26-11 lead. The Sooners responded with a 25-4 run and rounded out the half with a 41-37 advantage at the break and limited Huff’s impact to just three points for the remainder of the half.
OU built separation with a 13-point lead in the second half, but Huff reignited to make things competitive, scoring 13 second-half points, including the Mountaineers’ last five points in regulation, to force overtime, where he continued to take over.
Pack and senior forward Tae Davis led the Sooners in their final collegiate appearances, with Pack leading the Sooners in scoring with 24 points and Davis carrying his weight with 19. The pair anchored a starting lineup that started all 37 games together, becoming just the third group in the nation to do so this season.
Moser’s group fell to 2-2 on the season in overtime games, with wins coming against Colorado (17-16) and Texas (21-15), and losses coming against Missouri (20-13) and WVU.
Despite the loss, the Sooners walked out of Las Vegas with $100,000 in NIL earnings and their most productive late-season stretch since Moser arrived in Norman. Before this season, the Sooners’ best record in their final 10 games under Moser came during his inaugural campaign in 2021-22, when OU went 5-5.
OU will have its eyes set on reaching the NCAA Tournament next season, and if recent trends hold, a March berth could be possible. Three out of four of last season's CBC top finishers — semifinalist Villanova (24-9), runner-up Central Florida (21-12) and champion Nebraska (28-7) — all reached March Madness in the 2025-26 season and improved their records from the previous season by almost four wins on average, raising questions if CBC earnings can influence a program’s trajectory.
With athletics director Roger Denny pledging more NIL spending towards the program and Moser returning for another season, OU enters the offseason looking to build on its late-season progress heading into the 2026-27 season.
This story was edited by Laurie Jones.
