Could it be 2008-2009 all over again for Sooner men and women
Nine games into their seasons, it feels like the not so long ago good old days
It is easy to forget just how strong Oklahoma basketball has been over the years.
It’s easy to forget the Sooner men’s rich history after three straight failures to reach the NCAA tournament and not a single Sweet 16 since Lon Kruger took a squad led by Buddy Hield to the 2016 Final Four.
It’s kind of easy to forget about the women given Sherri Coale’s missing the NCAA tournament her last three seasons prior to retirement following 19 straight getting there and, though coach Jennie Baranczyk’s been gangbusters since coming over from Drake, winning 74 games and a pair of regular-season conference crowns entering this season, the program’s still seeking its first Sweet 16 appearance since 2013.
It’s also easy to forget just how good the two programs used to be simultaneously, both reaching the Final Four in 2002; both reaching region finals in 2009, when the women reached their first of two straight Final Fours and the men the Elite Eight; the programs combining to receive 13 — men six, women seven — No. 4 NCAA tourney seeds or better between 2000 and 2009; three times receiving No. 4 seeds or better the same season.
And, right now, together, the two programs are threatening to have that kind of a season again.
Perhaps not quite like 2009, when both won 30 games and both claimed consensus first-team All-Americans in Blake Griffin and Courtney Paris, but maybe close?
Sure.
Nobody’s been a bigger critic of Porter Moser than me and still I wish he’d not robotically shout the entire game but take a moment or two to digest it before shouting. Still, his fourth straight offseason reclamation project appears to be better than all the others and his squad has the stats to prove it.
Evidence also includes a No. 9 ranking and 9-0 record.
It’s an apparently better rebuild not only because he kept Jalon Moore, who’s averaging 18.2 points and has been in the 20s in six of nine games, and lured Jeremiah Fears into the program, his top recruit to date, who showed up ready to play and now starts and averages 16.7 points and 4.7 assists.
But also because two of his other starters, Kobe Elvis and Duke Miles, each averaging a hair under 10 points — Miles averages 4.1 assists, too — not only appear to have the athleticism required to compete in the SEC after transferring in from Dayton (Elvis) and High Point (Miles), but they’re fifth-year players, too, who already know how to play basketball.
A look at the numbers reveals Moser’s Sooners still aren’t getting off enough shots: 57.6 on average, 211th of 364 Division I teams, but it’s more than the rest of his OU teams and, gloriously, more than the 56.9 opponents are getting off.
The women are getting off 70.
Also, Moser's Sooners are hitting 80.5 percent of their foul shots while getting to the stripe significantly more than opponents, while also turning the ball over significantly less than opponents — 11.2 to 15.4 — even recording a 15.1 steal percentage, fourth best in the nation.
I never thought I’d be saying this, but Moser now appears to have kept his job long enough to finally emerge from the hot seat he’s been on each of the last two seasons.
Simultaneously, Baranczyk’s women are ranked 10th with an 8-1 mark, the only loss to ninth-ranked Duke on a neutral court in overtime.
And while their number’s are gaudier than the men’s, there’s nonetheless more room for clear improvement.
Baranczyk’s squad ranks fourth in the nation at 92.4 points per game, shooting a fourth-best in the nation 50.8 percent from the field, averaging a nation’s best 21.7 assists per game, outscoring opponents by a nation’s ninth-best 31.7 point average.
Get this, the Sooners’ 1.3-to-1 assist-to-turnover ratio ranks 16th, even as their 17.9 turnovers per game ranks 232nd. Also, though getting to the free-throw-line for 18.7 attempts per game, a respectable 88th in the nation, their 66.7 free-throw percentage means they’re only making 12.4 per game, 129th in the nation.
But they’re so hard to stop.
Skylar Vann, Big 12 player of the year last season, just netted 20 points against Alabama State, making her the third Sooner to reach that point plateau.
Raegan Beers, the All-American junior transfer post from Oregon State has already done it four times and Peyton Verhulst, in addition to an 18-point game, has done it twice.
Not quite 20, but Sahara Williams has recorded a 19-point game.
Against then 22nd-ranked Louisville, in Louisville, the Sooners trailed by 17 points in the first half and 11 entering the fourth quarter only to outscore the Cardinals 29-12 over the final 10 minutes to win 78-72.
The season already includes a 122-point outburst against Western Carolina and a 68-point first-half outburst against Alabama State.
So deep, their busiest player on the court, Verhulst, is only playing 25.9 minutes per game; 10 players are playing at least 10 minutes per game; and two more, Aubrey Jones and Reyna Scott, are playing 9 and 8.9.
In large part thanks to Beers, a big body at 6-foot-4, opponents aren’t doing much in the paint, making the Sooners a top-10 field goal percentage defensive squad, too, opponents hitting just 32.8 percent of their attempts.
Imagine what they’ll do if they quit turning the ball over and make their free throws.
Once, not even that long ago, both programs filled the same arena the university now wants so badly to vacate.
Eventually, maybe it can be that kind of a season again, too.