Oklahoma AD Roger Denny Ready to 'Dig in' and 'Figure Out' How to Get Men's Basketball Rolling Again

NORMAN — New Oklahoma athletic director Roger Denny will have to get right to work to fix the men’s basketball program.

Porter Moser’s team is on a seven-game losing streak, the longest skid for OU basketball since 2017, in Moser’s fifth season in Norman.

Oklahoma, like every athletic department, will have its own unique set of circumstances, but Denny acknowledged that charting a path forward for every sport has gotten more difficult over the past five years.

“With basketball, one thing we’ve got to understand, especially as rev share has taken hold, is that the sports are diverging a little bit,” Denny said at his introductory press conference on Wednesday. “Football’s a lot different than basketball now. The strategies around how you build a winner are different in each sport. It used to be hire a great coach and build great facilities and if you build it they will come. That’s not the way it works anymore.”

Denny played a role in returning the Illinois basketball program to national prominence.

“Before going into Illinois,” OU president Joseph Harroz Jr. said, “he had been doing things from that law firm that involved searches for their head football coach, leading searches for their head basketball coach. They've been on a historic run in both of those areas.

“… That coach he brought in (Brad Underwood) has won three of the last five Big Ten Championships.”

OU has yet to get the balance right for men’s basketball since Lon Kruger retired, and there’s no one factor that has held the Sooners back.

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Investment in the team on the floor as well as the program off the floor, the Lloyd Noble Center, fan engagement and Moser’s job performance itself all form the circular discussion on what is truly holding the program back.

Randall Stephenson, Chair and Special Advisor to the President of OU Athletics, said Denny’s vision drew Oklahoma to its new AD.

“What I really liked about it is he had a lot of really great technical background, but more than anything, he has incredible operating chops,” Stephenson said. “I mean, this guy just flat knows how to operate, and he knows how to build a plan.

“He knows how to put a plan in front of an organization and how to drive execution through an organization.”

Oklahoma Sooners, Roger Denny and Randall Stephenson — Oklahoma Director of Athletics Roger Denny (center) next to Chair and Special Advisor to the President of OU Athletics Randall Stephenson (right). | SARAH PHIPPS/THE OKLAHOMAN / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

Understandably, Denny didn’t yet have a full plan on how to fix OU basketball to present to everyone. But he has a clear first step in mind.

“Each sport and each program deserves a strategy of its own, Denny said. “So I met Coach Moser this morning for the first time so I know nowhere near enough to tell you what we’re going to do over there. But I can tell you we’re going to dig in. We’re going to sit down with Coach Moser and figure it out. That’s what we’ll do.”

As time goes on, Denny has a clear philosophy on how he intends to work with his head coaches to get the best out of each program.

“I think the key is to have checkpoints throughout the year,” he said. “… We have to sit down at the beginning of the year and understand what our goals are, what our strategies are going to be and how we’re going to get there. So that during the year when things start going sideways, we’re not letting emotion drive our decisions. We can go back to that stake we put in the ground and use that to drive our decisions.

“Then at the end of the year, and measure our effectiveness against those decisions. I think it’s just that constant communication of putting a stake in the ground, making decisions in peace time, so to speak, and then tracking back to do that when things start to get a little hairy and to make sure we’re not acting with emotion and acting with the same strategies we put in place.”

Unfortunately for Moser, Denny’s arrival coming so late in the basketball season may deprive the OU coach of the luxury of multiple check-ins to get the program back on track.