The OU men’s basketball program has made 30 NCAA Tournament appearances, and 25 of those appearances have come in the last 35 years. Before that Sooner basketball was essentially a placeholder on the calendar between fall football and spring football.
Billy Tubbs coached eight OU NCAA Tournament teams in his 14 seasons as the Sooners’ head coach. Four of those teams earned a No. 1 seed in the tournament, and the 1987-88 team played in the national championship game. losing to Danny Manning and the No. 6-seeded Kansas Jayhawks, a team Oklahoma beat twice during the regular season.