OU Basketball: How Will Open Date Affect Oklahoma After First Conference Win?

NORMAN — Oklahoma’s Porter Moser has never experienced a conference bye as a head coach.

As a Big 12 member, the Sooners never had an open date. And Moser, previously the coach at Loyola-Chicago and Illinois State, never had one while leading those Missouri Valley squads.

Admittedly, Moser isn’t sure how he feels about it.

“I think it’s both (good and bad),” Moser said after Saturday’s win against South Carolina.

From a momentum standpoint, Moser might’ve liked for his team to play early this week.

After a four-game slide to begin SEC play, the Sooners took down the Gamecocks 82-62 on Saturday. OU (14-4, 1-4 SEC) trailed in the second half before retaking the lead and going on a 15-0 run that turned a five-point advantage into a 20-point lead.

Jalon Moore paced OU’s offense with 22 points, while Jeremiah Fears and Kobe Elvis added 16 and 12, respectively. The dominant second half came after Oklahoma’s losses to Alabama, Texas A&M, Georgia and Texas.

“This team needed it bad,” Moser said. “That narrative is over, we got an SEC win. Now let’s go. Start stacking wins, playing better so we can stack wins.”

From the perspective of trying to stack wins and get closer to .500 in league play, the rest might be beneficial.

The Sooners travel to Fayetteville to battle Arkansas on Saturday after their seven-day break. The Razorbacks were one of just two SEC squads winless in league play before they beat Georgia on Wednesday.

After last week’s win, Moser said that he would give his players “a handful of days off” this week.

Making the rest even more important, the Sooners will step into the gauntlet after the Arkansas game.

Nine of the Sooners’ final 12 opponents during the regular season are currently ranked in the AP Top 25. The SEC takes up five of the spots in the poll’s top 10, with Auburn ranked No. 1 unanimously in the nation.

The only three opponents left that aren’t ranked are Vanderbilt, LSU and Texas. The Sooners have already fallen once to the Longhorns, the Commodores recently upset Tennessee and the Tigers are a 12-win squad.

All 16 SEC teams are ranked in the top 100 of the NET rankings, a formula that's used heavily by the NCAA Tournament selection committee when deciding which teams make the tourney.

This makes for a conference schedule where there are no “gimmes.”

Now it comes down to whether the Sooners use the rest from their open date to their advantage, or if they allow it to kill their momentum.

“It was definitely a big win for us, especially going on that losing streak, and I think we did a great job of just staying together and pushing each other in practice, just giving it everything we got on the floor to help us get this win today,” Fears said.

Moser added, “To get that narrative of getting the first one out of the way and getting our confidence back up to play winning basketball. You’re going to have tons of opportunities in this league. We needed to log that first one so we could move forward.”