NORMAN — Like Yogi Berra said, it’s deja vu all over again.
OU men’s basketball under Porter Moser is becoming quite redundant. Rack up wins against lesser non-conference foes, struggle in conference play, sweat it out on Selection Sunday.
If the Sooners miss the NCAA Tournament for the fourth consecutive season, we might look back to what happened Wednesday night as a reason why.
No. 16 OU’s 80-78 loss to No. 9 Texas A&M was a brutal defeat for all sorts of reasons.
1. The Sooners led the Aggies by 18 points with 17 minutes left in the game. Texas A&M outscored OU 47-27 from then on.
2. OU guard Brycen Goodine had 34 points off the bench! The transfer from Fairfield via Providence and Syracuse shot 9-of-11 from behind the arc. His nine 3-pointers were the most by a Sooner since Trae Young made 10 against TCU in 2018. OU shot 14-of-24 (58%) from 3-point range and lost.
More: OU basketball collapses in SEC home opener vs Texas A&M as Sooners squander 18-point lead
3. Texas A&M was without star guard Wade Taylor IV, who was injured. A two-time All-SEC selection, Taylor is the Aggies’ leading scorer at 15.7 points per game. Up stepped Zhuric Phelps in Taylor’s absence. Phelps matched Goodine with a 34-piece — one of the most obscure scoring duels I can remember.
4. This was OU’s first-ever SEC home game. If the Sooners are to make the NCAA Tournament, they have to protect their home floor in conference play. You can find all sorts of data points as to why OU has missed the tournament in each of Moser’s first three seasons, but a 13-14 record in Big 12 home games is as glaring as any. And this SEC might be better than any of those Big 12s.
“It was a very, very tough loss, but man, you’ve gotta have amnesia,” Moser said. “You gotta come right back and get ready and then we’ve gotta win on the road.”
The Sooners (13-2, 0-2 SEC) were undefeated this time last week. To suddenly say they’re reeling is an overstatement, but after getting demolished at Alabama on Saturday, this was a chance for OU to bounce back on its home floor against a really good Texas A&M team, but one that was missing its star.
“Hurts like hell to lose that game,” said Sooner big man Sam Godwin.
OU had its chances even after blowing the big lead. Star freshman Jeremiah Fears — who was a lot too loose with the basketball Wednesday (turnovers killed the Sooners) — missed the front end of a one-and-one with 29 seconds left. Instead of taking a three-point lead, Texas A&M secured the rebound trailing by one point. Then Phelps drained a 3-pointer — his sixth of the game — to sink the Sooners.
Texas A&M coach Buzz Williams was exceedingly complimentary of Moser after the game. The two have known each other for a long time.
“I think he’s done a really good job, I think he has a really good team and they’re gonna win a bunch of games,” Williams said. “I have the utmost respect for who he is personally, but also have the utmost respect for who he is professionally.
“Since he’s been at Oklahoma, because I’m so consumed with what I’m doing, this is the first time I’ve really studied him. Man, the stuff they were doing, that’s why they were cutting us up the way that they were.”
More: Oklahoma basketball’s NCAA Tournament résumé for March Madness: Jan. 3
Williams didn’t make his first NCAA Tournament at Virginia Tech until his third season. He didn’t take the Aggies dancing until Year 4 (the tournament was canceled in his first season).
Williams was asked about the difficulties of breaking through at a new place, as Moser is trying to do at OU after being the darling of college basketball at Loyola Chicago.
“I think it’s hard,” Williams said. “The other thing that’s hard is since he’s been here, I think NIL had just begun, I think the portal was one year into beginning … Also, there’s been a league change. This has become so volatile that within those changes, nobody has the answer.”
Moser took the loss Wednesday on the chin.
“They were ready to play, they did so many good things and it’s my job to get them back up and ready to play again because they’re hurting,” Moser said. “They’re hurting, they know they fell a play short and it was a big top-10 win, and we didn’t get it.”
A big top-10 win that should’ve been.
Deja vu all over again.
Joe Mussatto is a sports columnist for The Oklahoman. Have a story idea for Joe? Email him at jmussatto@oklahoman.com. Support Joe’s work and that of other Oklahoman journalists by purchasing a digital subscription today at subscribe.oklahoman.com.
This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Can Porter Moser and OU basketball avoid deja vu all over again?
