OU Basketball: 'Hurting' Oklahoma Heads to Ole Miss Almost Out of Postseason Chances

That one just felt different.

Oklahoma had given away big leads and had watched huge rallies come up short. The yo-yo Sooners were blown out by good teams and choked against bad ones.

But going toe-to-toe with the mighty Kentucky Wildcats inside Lloyd Noble Center for the first time ever — OU was up for the game, UK got a couple players healthy, both teams played at an extremely high level — and then suffering an 83-82 loss in the final seconds seems like it will leave a pretty nasty scar on this Sooner squad.

“I can't say enough about our guys’ effort, how tough they were, how they battled back, played the right way and just competed and believed,” OU coach Porter Moser said Wednesday night in the postgame press conference. “And I’m hurt for them. Hurt for them, and that they fell one point short in this game.

“But we got to channel it and turn right around and go back Saturday and channel that towards Ole Miss.”

There’s the real trick for this OU team.

They’ve been painfully close in a handful of losses in this inaugural SEC season. But the outcome has become all too familiar: Oklahoma loses.

Only, the Sooners were ready for Kentucky. Lying in wait, at times, it seemed. A good plan defensively — but one that ultimately fell apart. A consistent and eventually scorching offensive effort — but that couldn’t get off a quality shot in the end. Emotions ran high both during and after the game — so much so that OU had to issue a statement that the school was looking for a fan who chucked a can at Kentucky players as they flaunted their success coming off the floor.

And now, an Ole Miss team that comes in 19-9 overall and 8-7 in SEC play and ranked just two spots out of this week’s Associated Press Top 25 stands between Oklahoma and its next victory.

ESPN bracket guru Joe Lunardi currently shows the Sooners among the “Last Four In,” No. 1 in the short line for the last chance to dance — meaning, Lunardi thinks if the tournament started today, they’d be in the 68-team field for the first time in Moser’s four seasons.

Of course, the tournament doesn’t start today. And as Moser found out last year, when OU was actually the first team left out of the field, Lunardi's analysis is for entertainment purposes only.

If Oklahoma were to run the table on its final three opponents — the Sooners host No. 14 Missouri (21-7, 10-5) on Wednesday for Senior Night, then close the regular season at rival Texas (16-12, 5-10) next Saturday — they’d be 7-11 in SEC play, and that’s as precarious as a conference record can get for an NCAA at-large team.

The NCAA’s Net Rankings reveal OU is currently ranked 50th. Naturally, that would rise with a win and fall with a loss. But with a current 5-9 record against Quad 1 teams, the Sooners are running out of runway fast. All three finishing opponents would be considered Quad 1 wins, so an 8-9 record there would be hard to deny.

But there’s absolutely no room for error now.

Now consider this team is wounded from Wednesday night’s defeat, and Saturday’s 1:05 p.m. tipoff in SJB Pavilion in Oxford looks even more daunting.

Moser said player leadership at this point is “really big” for the Sooners — starting Thursday and running through all next week.

“They gave everything they got,” Moser said. “They laid it on the line. And so the leadership to turn around … against a very tough Ole Miss team ... leadership of getting them back in, keep your head up, coming back and understanding that's a that's another … it's a big-time opportunity.

“They battled their tails off at a high-level team in a high-level atmosphere, and we got to channel that and go into the next game against Ole Miss.”