Oklahoma Basketball: 2023-24 season preview for the Sooners
By Joey Loose
Certainly evident in recent years, the Big 12 is the nation’s deepest and perhaps best conference for basketball. With Baylor and Kansas both claiming national titles in the last 30 months, it’s no wonder that some of the other teams in this league seem to be playing catch up. While the Sooners have had prosperity in this past decade alone, Oklahoma Basketball is certainly in a bit of a rough patch right now.
The Sooners enter their third season under head coach Porter Moser hoping to avoid repeating the results of the first two. While Oklahoma can look back to a Final Four run as recently as 2016, they’ve made just three trips to the Big Dance since then and finished under .500 this past season. Oklahoma also tied for last place in the Big 12, finishing just 5-13 against their tough slate of conference foes.
What will make life even trickier for Moser are the wholesale changes on his roster. The Transfer Portal has caused significant havoc to continuity for programs in college basketball and the Sooners will certainly feel that this year. Four of their starters and best players are no longer with the program, as top scorers Grant Sherfield, Tanner Groves, and Jalen Hill have bid farewell to Norman.
Unsurprisingly, Moser hasn’t exactly been sitting on his hands. There’s a significant flock of transfers that will contribute at Oklahoma this upcoming season, though the Sooners are looking for a bit more consistency than last season. The Sooners have really struggled with turnovers these last two seasons, and we’re not talking about roster turnover. Moser built historic success at Loyola-Chicago, but one-year transfers and struggling offenses aren’t going to win you Big 12 titles.
The Big 12 added four new schools this offseason, presenting an even bigger challenge for Oklahoma in the years ahead. This Sooners program was a national contender less than a decade ago, but can they get back to that level in this new age of college basketball? We’re going to take a deep dive into where this program stands for the upcoming year, looking at their roster, the schedule, and speaking about some realistic expectations. Can Oklahoma emerge in a really tough 14-team new-look league with their newly built roster?