It felt as if Porter Moser had finally gotten his Oklahoma Sooners team over the hump. It wasn’t just a win against the No. 2 team in the nation, it was a blowout against the No. 2 team in the nation. The Sooners were a physical presence that bullied the Crimson Tide out of the building. They shot the lights out. They looked the part of a team primed to turn the corner.
Then they lost to Oklahoma State in front of a packed Lloyd Noble Center.
The OU student section has a tradition during basketball games. Each student will hold up a copy of the OU Daily while the opposing team’s lineup is introduced. Then, they will tear up their paper into little pieces until it is more or less the shape of confetti. The students will hold that confetti until the Sooners make their first basket. Free throws don’t count. They ended up needing to hold that confetti for more than four minutes into the game until, finally, the Sooners connected on their fifth shot of the game.
That pretty much sums up how OU performed throughout the game on the offensive side of the floor. The shots weren’t falling. Defensively, they just didn’t have the size to keep Oklahoma State out of the paint. The Cowboys had their mismatches, and they exploited them for 40 minutes.
Any and all good feelings about the direction of Moser’s squad have been evaporated. A bad loss in Bedlam will do that. But here’s the big problem with this loss: it happened in front of a full LNC.
The apathy towards the men’s and women’s basketball programs has been a well-documented issue in recent seasons. Since Porter Moser was hired, he has worked diligently to drum up student support, and he’d done a fine job at that.
The student section for men’s games is the most lively it’s been in years. Against Alabama and Oklahoma State, other fans followed. The Lloyd Noble Center was packed for both games. The Sooners didn’t just lose to Oklahoma State, they got beat up by Oklahoma State in front of a large crowd that never had any reason to get into the game.
The buzz around the team is gone. The win against Alabama could’ve been the spark of an amazing run to the Big 12 tournament, but it appears that it just wasn’t meant to be.
There’s still time to turn the season around, and it’s definitely too soon to start questioning the Moser hire, but the Sooners are going to have a hard time getting the crowd back into the Lloyd Noble Center bottle.
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