Four things OU had going for it. Hottest player in College BB. Great well rounded team even with out hot freshman. Home court advantage. NU best all around player out with injury.
We will be better by the end of the season. OU will still be good but perhaps not as hot as they are right now.
Excellent post. And you make an important point in your last sentence. Teams get better and get worse, oftentimes from game to game. That is why transitive property (though it is the basis for RPI, I believe) is farily useless.
Oklahoma played like a final four team on Saturday, imo. But we and Purdue both played like Sweet 16 teams in our matchup. No way Georgia Tech played as poorly in their matchup with us as they did, with, say Grambling. Conversely, we played horrendously vs. Loyola MD, nowhere near as well as we did vs. Purdue and other teams. Heck, I even saw an otherwise awesome Villanova team play a terrible game vs. LaSalle that they easily could have lost.
Teams have their ups and downs, but good, well coached teams tend to have more of the former, and less of the latter. We had a lot more of the former and less of the latter under one of the most pressure-packed situations a Power-5 teams has ever gone through last year. Though I certainly could be proven wrong, I do believe that we are quite capable of figuring it out this year and once again making the Dance.