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By Megan Armstrong
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On Friday, the Oklahoma Sooners (19-15) men's basketball team fell to the Arkansas Razorbacks (24-8) in an 82-79 back-and-forth affair.
The loss knocked Oklahoma out of the SEC Tournament and ended its six-game winning streak. The Sooners have won eight of their last 11 to make a push for the men's NCAA Tournament. Before that stretch, the Sooners slogged through a nine-game losing streak, so for Oklahoma to even be on bubble watch is an accomplishment.
After the game, Colton Sulley of The Oklahoman reported that Arkansas' Hall of Fame head coach John Calipari had called Oklahoma head coach Porter Moser at some point this season and told him, "This may be your best job ever of coaching."
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The Oklahoma athletics department must agree.
"Oklahoma Athletic Director Roger Denny tells ESPN that Porter Moser will return to the Sooners next year," ESPN's Pete Thamel reported on Saturday morning. "They met this morning and spoke about building the program for 2026-27, including increased resources throughout the program and specifically NIL for players."
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According to The Oklahoman's Sulley, Denny has been "leaning towards" retaining Moser for "several weeks." Denny's desire to keep Moser "came down to Moser's level of success with the resources he's been given," Sulley wrote.
"Candidly, we're not resourced at the level that we need to be resourced,” Denny told Sulley. “We, as an athletics department, have a long history of outperforming our resources, and in almost every sport that we have, but that only gets you so far, right? We're not holding up our end of the bargain."
Denny inferred that the athletics administration can't accurately gauge Moser until they align expectations, resources, and performance.
Oklahoma hired Moser in April 2021 after Moser spent the previous four seasons heading up the Loyola Chicago men's basketball program. Since joining OU, Moser has led the Sooners to the men's NCAA Tournament once, where they lost to UConn in the first round last March.
Moser made his case as to why the Sooners should go dancing again after losing to Arkansas.
"What I want the country to know is they’re playing some of the best basketball in the country right now,” Moser said, according to News 9 in Oklahoma. “You look at it analytically, they’re one of the top 15 teams the way we’re playing. We’re in the No. 1 conference in the country. They’ve won, going into the night, they’ve won eight out of 10 SEC games."
On Saturday, ESPN's Joe Lunardi projected Oklahoma among the First Four Out, alongside San Diego State, Auburn, and New Mexico. The Sooners will learn their fate tomorrow. Selection Sunday begins at 6 p.m. EST on CBS.
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