OU basketball with early-season resume-building chances at Battle 4 Atlantis
OU basketball has never been afraid to schedule tough in the non-conference. Sometimes those games don’t always pan out as being big wins, but the effort is there.
Head coach Porter Moser not slowing down now that OU is in the Southeastern Conference. The Sooners will be one of the eight teams headed to the Bahamas for the Battle 4 Atlantis event in three months, it was announced Wednesday.
OU begins against Providence on Nov. 27 (4 p.m.). The Sooners defeated the Friars in Norman last season in one of those efforts to schedule tough.
The winner of that game will take on the winner of Arizona-Davidson in the semifinals on Nov. 28. The final day will be Nov. 29.
Other side of the bracket has Louisville vs. Indiana and West Virginia vs. Gonzaga to open up the event.
Moser on SEC Now: ‘I like the makeup of our guys’
Tuesday saw the SEC schedule announced. OU will play Texas, Texas A&M and Missouri twice and every other team once. It will begin at Alabama and feature home games vs. Tennessee and Kentucky.
The goal stays the same. Now in his fourth season in Norman, Moser eyeing that initial NCAA Tournament appearance after being the First Team Out last March.
“Trust me, I’ve been fired up since Selection Sunday,” Moser said on SEC Now on Tuesday night. “And a lot of different emotions since last year being the last one out. I’m excited to get going again to get this feeling out of my gut, just to compete and grow the team and all those things in the new league.
“I think it’s a journey. Today I just came from our first workout downstairs. Everyone in the country was there, did their eight weeks in the summer. And that’s the beginning, man, coming together.
“I like the makeup of our guys in terms of their work ethic, their willingness to come in and listen and be coached and the attention to detail. So I like the makeup of it. It’s early. It’s early. We’ve got a long way to go on both ends. But man, I just like the energy of this group and that’s a great starting point.”
