There's just no getting rid of this guy
Denny makes wrong choice, casts next season as a new era of support for program
How many phases of the Porter Moser experiment has Sooner men’s basketball endured since he arrived in Norman from Loyola-Chicago in April of 2021?
There was the we’ll-win-with-guys-from-Eastern-Washington-and-other-similar-milieus phase.
Hello Tanner Groves and Jacob Groves.
Then came the oh-my-goodness-he’s-finally-got-good-players phase.
Which quickly gave way to the he-doesn’t-know-what-to-do-with-them phase.
Closely followed by the he-doesn’t-know-how-to-keep-them phase.
Hello Otega Oweh, Milos Uzan, Duke Miles and others.
And overlapping them all was the longest phase:
The can’t-get-enough-shots-up phase.
Hello Moser’s first four Sooner seasons, when of about 350 Division I programs, Oklahoma ranked 346th (53.1), 337th (53.3), 299th (56.2) and 307th (55.7) in field-goal attempts per game.
How is any team supposed to score points without taking shots?
This season: 98th (60.4).
Is that progress?
Maybe it will be next year, when it becomes a trend.
Because haven’t you heard?
Joe Castiglione’s successor, Roger Denny, wasted no time letting the cat out of the bag, announcing Moser would indeed return for a sixth Sooner season despite, there’s no other way to put it, his historic lack of success.
In five seasons, the stand-up-and-yell-in-every-moment skipper has accumulated a 93-74 overall record, a 33-57 conference record (20-34 Big 12, 13-23 SEC) and reached the NCAA tournament only once, losing to Connecticut in the round of 64 last season.
True, this campaign felt different.
It was the first Moser-led Sooner unit to play its best basketball at the end of the season, proven by the six-game winning streak Oklahoma carried into Friday’s 82-79 third-round SEC tournament loss to 17th-ranked Arkansas.
On Sunday, the Razorbacks received the No. 4 seed into the NCAA tournament’s West Regional.
Meanwhile, the Sooners were recognized as the tournament’s first team out — a distinction they also earned in ’24 — one spot behind one-loss Miami (Ohio), a quarterfinal-round loser at the MAC tournament.
That late magic aside, every Sooner coach prior to Moser, going back to Dave Bliss, who took the program over 50 years ago, has enjoyed at least one Sweet 16 run at the NCAA tournament.
All but one Sooner coach over that same span has secured an overall winning conference record, and the one who didn’t, Jeff Capel, still won an NCAA tournament game in ’08 and led OU to the Elite Eight in ’09.
Denny insinuated it’s been OU that’s let Moser down rather than the other way around.
“At Oklahoma, we’ve had a long history of embodying an underdog spirit,” Denny said via Twitter. “And in men’s basketball, that mentality has often led to us outperforming our resources.
“It’s on Coach Moser to make sure that our team’s performance continues to meet and exceed our resources for the program. He’s done that and I’m confident he will continue to.”
Denny then put it on the fans.
“It’s critical our fans show out for our team,” he said. “I’ve seen firsthand the difference community support of college basketball can make. A bigger and louder crowd, a true home-court advantage and a zealous fan base are all essential to our success.”
Finally, he offered schmaltz, calling it a proud program and saying “we’re going to restore that pride together.”
A few things:
One, I’m willing to believe OU’s a laggard among SEC hoops spenders, but not in the Big 12 where Moser suffered a worse three-season run than the two-season span he’s traveled in the Sooners’ new conference.
Two, maybe it really is Castiglione’s fault, and though that’s not what Denny was trying to say of the man he replaced as Sooner sports czar, it’s the only translation and maybe he’s right.
Perhaps OU gave everything it had to football as the Sooners moved conferences. And in the meantime, preparing to make the move, there simply wasn’t time to be running national coaching searches while paying outgoing coaches’ buyouts, whatever they were.
Maybe Castiglione was asleep at the wheel, too engulfed in SEC readiness. Maybe he couldn’t afford to care about Sooner hoops like he once had. Maybe he didn’t have the stomach to make the move once he knew he’d soon need replacing.
It’s unfortunate, at least.
To Sooner fans who were raised on Billy Tubbs and Kelvin Sampson, it must feel like surrender, just as pinning so many hopes on a new arena must, too, for once there was a time Lloyd Noble Center rocked and it was not just a moment, but season after season after season.
Probably, Denny didn’t need a national coaching search on his hands, either.
Probably, he didn’t want to pay Moser’s reported $5.2 to $5.8 million buyout.
Probably, he has no real awareness or appreciation of what Sooner basketball’s been, having not lived it.
All that and since his own arrival all he’s seen is a coach pull a team back from the brink to do everything it possibly could to reach the NCAA tournament only to fall a victory short.
The one thing Denny’s done right, presuming he’s telling the truth, is come clean.
That way, he might not be full of it as he casts next season as the beginning of something rather than the continuation of something we’ve all watched for far too long.
He should have started over completely.
At least he’s made himself accountable.
Small charity.
Porter Moser has had five years. One tournament appearance. A conference record that would get most coaches walked to the parking lot before the buyout conversation started. Every coach before him reached the Sweet 16 at least once. That’s not a high bar. That’s the floor. Moser hasn’t touched it. So what does the new AD do? He keeps him. Then tells the fans they need to be louder. Tells the community it needs to show up harder. Down South we call that talking around the point. The point is: they didn’t want to pay the buyout.
That’s fine. Buyouts are real. Say that. Don’t tell the fans who packed Lloyd Noble for Billy Tubbs and Kelvin Sampson that the problem is their energy. Those fans know what this program was. They lived it. The one honest thing Denny did was say plainly he’s keeping Moser. No spin, no national search theater. That matters. It’s the minimum. It just isn’t worth a Sweet 16.