The Sooners appeared to have rallied enough over their final four regular-season games to secure an NCAA Tournament appearance for the seventh time in nine seasons under head coach Lon Kruger.
No. 3-seeded Oklahoma probably had done enough that it didn’t matter what happened in its quarterfinal matchup with West Virginia in the Big 12 Tournament, which was a good thing because the lower-seeded Mountaineers were actually favored over the Sooners, who had swept West Virginia during the season.
All of that is speculation, of course, but it makes for a happy ending in what otherwise was a necessary but still frustrating end to an up-and-down season of Sooner basketball.