The 1980s was a terrific decade for Sooner men’s basketball, and the final year of that decade was one of the best. During the 1980s, under the orchestration of head coach Billy Tubbs. Oklahoma was the epitome of a run-and-gun basketball team. One writer described Oklahoma basketball under Tubbs as “the equivalent of punk rock: brash and ruthless.”
Between 1982 and 1990, Tubbs took eight Oklahoma teams to the NCAA Tournament, including a national championship runner-up in 1988. Oklahoma won the Big Eight regular-season championship four times in the decade of the 1980s and finished second on three other occasions.