It’s been a long, hard month for Oklahoma men’s basketball - and unfortunately for the Sooners, the road ahead doesn’t get any easier. In fact, it’s about to get a whole lot tougher.
After opening SEC play with a win over Ole Miss, Oklahoma has dropped eight straight, slipping to the bottom of the conference standings. And here’s the kicker: that January stretch, the one where they went 1-8, was the “easy” part of their schedule. According to ESPN’s Basketball Power Index, the Sooners now face the toughest remaining schedule in the entire country.
Let’s break that down.
Oklahoma has nine SEC games left - two in March and seven in February - and six of them are against Quad 1 opponents. That’s the NCAA’s way of saying “these are the elite matchups,” and five of those six are on the road.
The only remaining Quad 2 games? Home tilts against Georgia, Texas A&M, and Missouri.
And here’s the stinger: both A&M and Mizzou already beat Oklahoma during this current eight-game slide.
So what’s next?
The Sooners open February with a trip to Kentucky, where they’ll face a familiar face in former Sooner Otega Oweh. He’s had no problem lighting up his old squad before - he averaged 27.5 points in two games against Oklahoma last season.
Then comes a visit to No. 15 Vanderbilt on Saturday, followed by road games at No.
25 Tennessee, LSU, and Texas. The home slate doesn’t offer much breathing room either, with Auburn, Georgia, Texas A&M, and Mizzou all coming to Norman.
To put it bluntly: this is a gauntlet. And it comes at a time when the Sooners are already reeling.
What makes this stretch especially tough isn’t just the caliber of opponents - it’s the timing. Confidence is low.
Momentum is nonexistent. And the games that were supposed to be winnable?
Those already slipped away. Five of Oklahoma’s first nine SEC games came against teams in the bottom half of the conference, and they lost four of those.
That’s the kind of missed opportunity that haunts a season.
Now, with the toughest schedule in the nation staring them down, the Sooners are in survival mode. The Power Index projects them to finish around 4-14 in SEC play.
That’s not a typo - that’s the math talking. And unless something dramatic changes, it’s hard to argue with it.
There’s still time to right the ship, of course. But make no mistake: the climb is steep, and the margin for error is gone. The Sooners are in the thick of one of the most brutal stretches in college basketball, and if they’re going to salvage anything from this season, it has to start now.