Long on heart, Moser short on understanding
Defending his team, the coach speaks, highlighting some of his problems
He’s just not the guy.
Yes, he’ll get another season to prove he might become the guy, and while each of us retains the right to be surprised, even happily, well …
He’s still not the guy.
That was made more clear at Tuesday’s semi-hastily-day-before-called press conference designed, in Porter Moser’s words, to “give some context about how our last 48 hours was, about how we feel about the NCAA Tournament, not getting in, and about the NIT.”
Really, what it appeared, he wanted to stick up for his team, let everybody know he’s yet to hear a sensible reason why the Sooners were left out of the 68-team tournament, explain how devastated, crushed and broken his players felt upon learning they’d been left out and reiterate how hard he and the program’s prepared to work in the aftermath of being left out.
The problem?
If you listened, if you really heard his words, even as they made you wish harder he might be the guy, the whole thing remained an indicator he’s not.
“Character is how you respond when things don’t go your way,” Moser said. “And how we’re going to respond [to] being gutted and devastated by this news is … there’s going to be no less acceleration of our efforts for Oklahoma basketball.
“My staff, the players, where we’re going … this was a devastating blow … but how we’re going to respond is with work, with energy, enthusiasm, with class.”
From the heart, it was enough to make you want to do what the great Marita Hynes said she wanted to do after interviewing Sherri Coale for the Sooner women’s hoops job almost 30 years ago: put on your sneakers and join the cause.
Other passages, though, defined the issue, as Moser took to railing about the incongruence of every reputable bracketologist putting OU in the tourney only for the tourney committee to leave OU out.
“I feel such hurt for the young guys who put so much into it, they they don’t have answers,” Moser said. “That, why were they left out when every single day the response I’m getting from people in the media, other coaches, ‘We had you in.’
“I can’t get an answer to tell me why and I think that’s where the flaw comes in.”
The problem, of course, is let’s say the Sooners got in.
By the skin of their teeth, they got in.
Is that really success?
By being the ninth of nine Big 12 programs to get into the tourney, by getting in despite going 4-7 over their last 11 games, by advancing despite losing to Central Florida once, Texas twice and flaming out one game into the conference tournament?
Being the last team selected into a 68-team event is not success. The bubble is not success. Being sub .500 in your own conference, no matter the conference, year after year, is not success.
Does he know he’s the first Sooner coach since the 1970s to skipper three straight teams to miss the tournament?
Does he know Kelvin Sampson was fortunate to keep his job after four straight NCAA tourney first-round exits and might well have been booted after another quick bolt … a fate avoided when the Sooners, an at-large No. 13 seed we’ll never see again, stunned Arizona and Charlotte to reach the Sweet 16?
It’s a failure of imagination.
Of knowing the standard
Also, a failure to recruit, keep and develop players. A failure of discipline, for how often did we watch OU run the floor in conference play as it ran the floor in non-conference play, a factor that had to be at the heart of Javian McCollum’s and Otega Oweh’s Big 12 dives.
Moser was asked what he’ll take with him about his players this season.
“The resiliency of this group sticks out to me,” he said. “Guys like Le’Tre Darthard and Rivaldo Soares, the absolute passion and urgency to make the tournament on an everyday basis.”
Those are great qualities, yes, but were they the only two showing them, because OU did not play with urgency or absolute passion as a team. Not even close. Had it, it wouldn’t have been left out and it certainly wouldn’t have failed to score even 12 points by the second media timeout in seven of its last 11 games.
There had to be a stat at the heart of so many slow starts and perhaps I finally found it.
Ultimately, the team Moser described Tuesday was not the team he’d been coaching up to Tuesday, because a team like that would have found a way to not just sneak into the tourney, but arrive there on its feet, with two, three or five more wins to its name.
It’s unfortunate.
Moser means well, wants to do well, has all the charisma you could hope for in a coach who means and wants to do well, who leaves you rooting for him despite offering few reasons, three seasons later, to believe in him.
Maybe he’ll surprise us.
Also, shouldn’t OU employ a coach who doesn’t have to?
Not yet, apparently.
Enjoy the offseason.
It hurts every time I see this terrible dud of a supposed coach talk about the future of OU basketball as he's now being allowed to do. He should have been fired last week and he certainly should be fired this week. He will lose his prized Jalon Moore to the portal and probably more. And every season he is allowed to remain at OU will be the same, including a near-complete turnover of talent. The guy is just not nearly qualified for a major college program. He cannot coach.
Thankfully, sports writers are not paid to decide the fate of basketball coaches.