Porter Moser encouraged by pain he saw in Oklahoma players' eyes following Houston loss

Porter Moser walked into a dejected Oklahoma locker room following Saturday’s loss against No. 1 Houston. The Sooners fought to the finish and nearly took the country’s top team to overtime before Jamal Shead knocked down the game-winning jump shot with 0.4 seconds on the clock.

OU players were understandably upset after coming so close, but Moser found a silver lining in the pain. He chose to focus on the fact that they competed hard and truly believed they were capable of winning the game.

“It was a tough vibe in there,” Moser said. “The guys, it wasn’t like they were happy to be close. They fought their tails off. I thought they believed. Their energy level, they made big plays. Obviously, Houston made big plays as well. They’re hurting and that’s a good sign.”

Oklahoma found itself down as many as 15 points in the second half before rallying back to tie the game with 12 seconds remaining. After Sam Godwin missed a free throw that would have made it a one-point game, Milos Uzan came up with a clutch offensive rebound to maintain possession.

He kicked it to Javian McCollum, who sliced his way through the lane to tie the game at 85. OU appeared to get a defensive stop on the next possession as Shead’s initial shot attempt missed. However, the Sooners failed to grab the rebound as Shead corralled his own miss to put up the game-winner.

Despite the disappointing way the game ended, Moser was still happy to see Oklahoma bounce back after scoring only 45 points and committing 14 turnovers the game prior against Iowa State. Although they didn’t win, he saw improvement in several areas.

“I thought they were resilient battling back. Houston, they make tough shots,” he said. “They made open shot, good shots. They do a lot of different things. They put so much pressure on you with how strong and hard their guards go downhill. (LJ) Cryer, (Emanuel) Sharp, those guys made some high-level shots, but I thought we did too.

“I really felt good about the things guys did offensively bouncing back from Iowa State. We really had a lot of film on the floor to talk about just being way more aggressive, not letting the turnover bother you. We came in not wanting to have a lot of turnovers. We had eight. Our starting five had five. I thought we talked about rebounding. They had six offensive rebounds. We played the best team in the country but we fell short. The margin for error when you play a team that good is small. The thing that sticks in my craw is they scored five points in the last second of each half.”

Oklahoma has now lost four of its last five games, but still figures to make the NCAA Tournament out of a tough Big 12. The Sooners have two more games remaining in the regular season, beginning against Cincinnati at 7 p.m. CT on Tuesday.