OU Basketball: Can Oklahoma End Losing Streak vs. No. 21 Mississippi State?

The Sooners have been routed four times in their five-game skid and host one of the SEC's best teams on Saturday in Norman.

Oklahoma's Jeremiah Fears, Dayton Forsythe and Duke Miles. | Alonzo Adams-Imagn Images

Oklahoma’s task is a tall one — literally, and figuratively.

The Sooners host No. 21-ranked Mississippi State in a Southeastern Conference clash on Saturday at noon inside Lloyd Noble Center. 

The Bulldogs are good — 19-7 on the year, 7-6 in SEC play, owners of five wins over AP Top 25 opponents, four of those by double-digits. 

Moreover, the Bulldogs are tall and play physical. They rank sixth in the SEC in total rebounds and fourth in offensive rebounds. They’re also in the upper half of the league in rebounding margin and blocked shots.

Although 5-foot-10 freshman Josh Hubbard leads the team in scoring at 17.8 points per game, it’s 6-10, 230-pound junior KeShawn Murphy who leads MSU in rebounding at 7.5 boards per game. Cameron Matthews, a 6-7 graduate student, averages 6.8. Michael Nwoko, a 6-10, 245-pound sophomore, averages 4.7. R.J. Melendez, a 6-7 senior, averages 4.2. Even the guards — 6-4 Claudell Harris, 6-5 Riley Kugel and 6-5 Shawn Jones — are big.

Sooner Nation knows from past struggles how their team performs against tall, physical SEC squads like Texas A&M, Auburn, Georgia, Alabama and Tennessee — and it’s not good. In those six double-digit losses, the Sooners were out rebounded 244-154.

Mississippi State is very much in that mold.

But with five games left in the regular season, the Sooners’ 2024-25 season has already reached a tipping point that has nothing to do with the opponents’ verticality or rebounding skill or basketball talent.

OU now seems to be playing against itself.

And for a team on a five-game losing streak — four blowouts and the added indignity of blowing a comfortable lead at home in the closing seconds to bottom-feeding LSU — it’s seldom about the opponent.

“We have a path,” Moser said after the LSU loss in Norman last week. “It’s a hard path. But it’s an attainable path. That’s the belief. Our belief and our confidence right now is cracked. And we gotta get it back.”

What followed those comments, of course, was an 85-63 loss at No. 2 Florida on Tuesday night, in which the Sooners trailed by 22 at halftime. This team is not only fighting against a stringent schedule, they’re fighting against the demons in their own heads — the ones assuring them their coach is on the hottest of seats after what will soon be four straight years without a trip to the NCAA Tournament.

According to ESPN bracket analyst Joe Lunardi’s Friday update, the Sooners are now on the top line of the group he considers “First Four Out” of the 68-team NCAA Tournament field.

That’s exactly where Moser’s squad ended up at the end of last season — literally the first team eliminated from the bracket by the NCAA Selection Committee. 

At 16-10 overall and just 3-10 in SEC play and likely to be significant underdogs in each of their final five games (Mississippi State and Kentucky in Norman, at Ole Miss, Missouri in Norman and at Texas), the cold reality of another March in the dark may be setting in for the Sooners.

“The message is, yes, there are some Top 25 games,” Moser said last week. “We gotta play better. We gotta play better winning basketball.”