Skip to main content
Oklahoma

OU, Porter Moser building a 'resiliency' narrative for program

Bob Przybyloby: Bob Przybylo7 hours agoBPrzybylo
Porter Moser50
OU head coach Porter Moser. (Nate Billings - Imagn Images)

The questions change for OU head coach Porter Moser and OU basketball. Now entering his fifth season, there is a certain question that doesn’t have to be asked anymore.

Moser doesn’t have to answer the dreaded no NCAA Tournament berth question. That was crossed off last season.

A huge late-season surge gave the Sooners their first appearance under Moser. Since then? It has felt like a wave of positive momentum, one thing after another.

Moser, of course, wishes OU could be eyeing a third straight tournament appearance. However, the disappointments and failures only made the success that much sweeter.

Resiliency became the theme, the narrative. The program, arguably, in the best spot that it has ever been under Moser.

“The narrative that I take away is everything you want to be about the resiliency,” Moser told SoonerScoop. “Everything you want. Backs against the wall, started out 10th in the country, you hit a hard spot, all these things. And the resiliency to fight through and to keep fighting through hard to find a way just showed the program, the guys coming back a belief and a path. I sat game after game with you guys after tough losses and was like, ‘There’s a path.’ And the guys to see that and get there. And make no mistake, that’s not my goal is just to get the ticket in there.

“And I said that to every recruit. But they saw the path and where we’re going with that… You don’t wanna go coulda, woulda, shoulda about the narratives. It should be we’re trying to get three in a row this year. But it was very, very hard to swallow how we didn’t. Then the narrative turns a certain way. But our narrative that we’re focusing in on is the resiliency. Direction. Fighting through hard. Fighting up that mountain where we’re trying to go. And that’s where we’re hanging our hat on with this program is that togetherness, toughness, belief, resiliency.”

OU hit one home run after another in the transfer portal. This feels like the best team, on paper, that Moser has had.

They have fought through to the other side. Now? It’s time to get to work, after all, and show everybody what that looks like.

OU begins its season next Monday (Nov. 3) vs. St. Francis at 7:30 p.m. at Lloyd Noble Center.

You may also like