OU March Madness Memories: Can the Sooners have a magical run?

What are the odds? OU was left for dead weeks ago. I even drove back to make sure. 

At some point between the start of Sunday night’s NCAA Selection Show and the seeming hours it took before arriving at the official announcement, Oklahoma is headed to Raleigh Friday night. It hit me. 

The Sooners are dancing, again – somehow. Unthinkable a few weeks ago. 

Not this team. No way, no how. I fired the head coach after Oklahoma’s stunning home loss to LSU. 

It’s embarrassing in every form. There should be a coaching change immediately. Absolutely unacceptable.

— Eddie Radosevich (@Eddie_Rado) February 16, 2025

It serves as a good reminder: We’re idiots. Ahem. More specifically, I’m the idiot. 

Our own Bob Przybylo – who is headed to Raleigh to anchor SoonerScoop.com’s coverage of the NCAA Tournament – wrote about this Sooners squad’s resiliency Tuesday. Tip of the cap, indeed. Whether you ‘gave up’ or simply grew apathetic to OU hoops over the last few months, making the Tournament is a nice ending to a season that saw its fair share of drastic, tumultuous ups and downs.

Good for seniors Jalon Moore and Sam Godwin on fulfilling a promise. Something that will never be taken away from them.

And while this isn’t necessarily a conversation about the program. No, there will be days ahead for that. Or even if Oklahoma’s resume was good enough for an at-large bid. It was.

It is a commentary on the feelings and memories that come when you’ve got a team in The Dance. It’s been a minute for Oklahoma. Make sure you enjoy it.

‘Hey, maybe they can get to the second weekend’ 

Cinderella finds a way every year. It’s the story we – as sports fans – fall in love with this time of the year. Some get remembered by name alone. Steph. Kemba. Buddy. 

For every Goliath, there’s a David. Do you remember where you were when UMBC beat Virginia? What about Farleigh-Dickinson over Purdue? Hello, Saint Peters. Where did you come from? Remember the first time you met Jim Larranaga and George Mason or Shaka Smart and Virginia Commonwealth? As a fan, all you can ask for this time of the year is an opportunity.  

As college athletics continues to shift into whatever new space we’re headed there remains something still so innocent about the magic that comes over the next few weeks. 

Oklahoma is back at the ball for the first time in years. Why not get greedy? 

But before you do. Before I do. Before we do. 

Here are a couple of Oklahoma basketball NCAA tournament moments that stick out over my lifetime. It’s good to reminisce before the ball is tipped Friday evening in Carolina.

1997 – Stanford holds off Oklahoma, Erdmann is my King

If I remember correctly, tears were shed in the Radosevich household. I was 9. And like many during the late 90s, my Saturday afternoons were spent dreaming of becoming the next Nate Erdmann. Little did I know it’d be closer to Doug Bell and the Phillips 66 Studios. But we’ll take it. There’s only so much that can be done for a chubby, undersized-not-good-enough-ballhandler who averaged 0.8 points per game at Tri-City and Satellite. 

Despite Erdmann’s game-high 22 points, Oklahoma lost its fourth consecutive NCAA Tournament game, dropping head coach Kelvin Sampson to 0-5 all-time in the Tournament. Since then you ask? Sampson has done just fine winning 26 Tournament games, including a trip back to the Final Four with Houston in 2021. 

The recipe for Mike Mongtomery’s Stanford squad? Brevin Knight. The All-American candidate’s 18 points, 10 assists double-double led the way for 6-seeded Stanford, holding off Erdmann, Lou Moore and Corey Brewer’s late rally. After seeing its lead cut to five, Stanford closed the final two minutes on a 10-2 run. 

“We’ve seen a lot of good guards,” said Sampson, in a Bob Hermson story from The Oklahoman, citing Kansas’ Jacque Vaughn, Colorado’s Chauncey Billups and Nebraska’s Tyronn Lue. “But you look at all the categories for great guards, and this kid (Knight) scores high in every one.”

It’s perhaps the first true memory of March Madness that I can remember as a kid. I certainly remember the late Ryan Minor, Hootie Wiley and Bobby Joe Evans. I was at the Lloyd Noble Center when Ernie Abercrombie knocked down a corner three to beat No. 1 Kansas. But the reality is I was still too young to really remember or grasp the magnitude that came with the Manhattan experience in 1995 when Oklahoma was upset by Fran Fraschilla’s 13-seeded Jaspers.

Lay off. That’s all I have these days. I’m getting old.

1999 – OU shocks Arizona, ending NCAA Tournament drought

Now we’re starting to hit the wheelhouse of core OU hoops memories. Eduardo Najera. Ryan Humphrey. Alex Spaulding. Michael Johnson. Eric Martin. Tim Heskett, Renzi Stone and Victor Avila. These are the years I grew up on when it came to OU basketball.  

Ryan Humphrey’s tip-in with :21 seconds left led Oklahoma to snapping a five-year drought in the NCAA Tournament leaving Lute Olson and Pac-10 Player of the Year Jason Terry stunned. 

The win would serve as a building block for Kelvin Sampson and Oklahoma. It could be argued there are some similarities between the daunting task Friday night in facing the defending national champion. Arizona wasn’t too far removed from a title two years prior.

Future NBA hooper-turned-ESPN broadcaster Richard Jefferson’s layup with 1:44 left gave Arizona a 60-56 lead, but AJ Bramlett missed a pair of free throws with just over a minute left leaving the door open for Eduardo Najera and the Sooners.

Sidenote: Pro move checking your kid out of school to watch the tournament. Truly a great memory and badass parenting. An even more elite move would be helping your kid run a school-wide bracket contest or survivor pool. I’m not sure about the legality, but hey, it’s America. This is only a suggestion.

Following the Bramlett misses at the charity line, Najera – who led Oklahoma with 17 points and 13 rebounds – knocked down a three from the left corner to cut the deficit to one. Michael Wright, then Pac-10 Freshman of the Year, turned the ball back over to Oklahoma on the ensuing possession after stepping across the end line while attempting to inbound the ball to Terry leading to Humphrey’s tip-in dramatics. 

In the week that followed Oklahoma found itself pitted against an upstart program in Michigan State led by fifth-year head coach Tom Izzo and a lesser-known point guard out of Flint, Michigan, named Mateen Cleaves. You have to remember this is 1999. Well before Izzo established himself as one of the great coaches in the modern era of college basketball.

The Cleaves/Najera Sweet 16 collision – literally – in St. Louis would be a defining moment of both the Sampson/Izzo eras built on hard-nosed defense. Despite the 54-46 Regional semifinal loss, it was the furthest an Oklahoma team had made it in the Tournament since 1989. 

I’m hooked. 

2002 and 2003 – The Hollis, Quannas Years 

Over the course of 2001-02 and 2002-03 seasons, Oklahoma won 58 games making a trip to the Final Four in Atlanta and a Regional final where they lost to eventual national champion Syracuse – led by freshman guard Carmelo Anthony – in Albany. ‘Neutral court’, amirite? 

Hollis Price and Quannas White are all-time Sooners. That is known. But there were others like Ebi Ere, Jason Detrick, Jabahri Brown and Daryan Selvy. You don’t need to be told this but Kelvin Sampson had it going. The Big Red shop was boomin’. Literally. If you’re reading this you probably scooped up a Sweet 16 t-shirt.

The Sooners would – again – meet (and beat) Lute Olson and the Arizona Wildcats cementing a spot in their first Final Four since losing 13 years before Danny Manning and Kansas. I was just 1 year old when the two teams met in ‘88. But I can tell you I would have loved Billy Ball. The Skeeter-Meter for sure would have been something that intrigued me. And, of course, would have loved to have lived through the Wayman Tisdale years. That we are sure. Blame it on my parents for my absence from those years. Love you, Ed and Karen. 

This two-year run was the thrill of a lifetime for a middle schooler in Oklahoma City sans the Oklahoma City Thunder. As a kid, Hollis Price was my Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. Quannas White was my Dub.

2009 – This Blake Griffin kid might be alright 

Growing up in northwest Oklahoma City you knew about the Griffin brothers. Their father, Tommy, was one of the most intimidating people I ever came across. I’ve told him as much. I grew up playing against Taylor. Okay, okay. The teams I played on competed against Taylor. I mostly sat on the bench and watched.

By 2009, I was in college (retired Hall of Fame hooper, obviously, except for the Phi Gam courts) and am now covering the team for OU Nightly.

Kelvin Sampson has left for Indiana. Jeff Capel is now running the program. But the success on the hardwood remains.

Oh and it should also be noted … Oklahoma has the best player in the country and it’s a sophomore that grew up in their own backyard. 

In opening-round wins over Morgan State and Michigan, Blake Griffin averaged 30.5 points and 15.0 rebounds, sending the Sooners back to the Sweet 16 with a 33-point, 17-rebound outing in a 73-63 second-round win over No.10-seed Wolverines. While in Kansas City, Griffin went 25-for-32 from the field (.781). Dominant is an understatement. 

One week later at the FedEx Forum in Memphis, Griffin scored 30 points and grabbed 14 rebounds while also delivering one of the dunks of the year. Junior guard Tony Crocker hit eight threes, combining with Griffin for 58 of the Sooners’ 84 points in an 84-71 win over No. 3-seed Syracuse.

I remember sitting in the back of the press room at the FedEx Forum thinking “Wow, Jim Boeheim really is the most grumpy Hall of Fame coach I’ve ever come across.” The memory that sticks out alongside Blake Griffin’s dominance was arriving at my courtside seat and realizing how many Tar Heel fans were there hanging around just to watch Blake dunk during warm-ups. 

A few months later, Griffin would become the No.1 pick in the 2009 NBA Draft. And the 3s stopped falling as Oklahoma’s backcourt went 2-for-18 in the Regional final won by UNC 72-60 en route to the national title. 

On a personal level, this would also be around the time I began discussions with one Carey Murdock, who was looking to expand his business SoonerScoop.com. Could say it was a life-changing month. Could also be argued it was the worst thing that ever happened to you out there in internet-land. I’ll let you decide, only tell me if it’s good.

2016 – Buddy Buckets, Sooners headed to Final Four 

Fueled by a second-half run ignited by eventual Wooden Award winner Buddy Hield, Oklahoma raced past Will Wade and upset-minded Virginia Commonwealth. For sure one of those ‘were you at the Peake?’ moments as Hield scored 19 of his game-high 36 points in the final eight minutes to help No. 2-seed Oklahoma back to the Sweet 16 with an 85-81 win in Oklahoma City.

Cool moment and an awesome scene in front of the hometown crowd that would set the stage for a trip to Anaheim where the Sooners scored a Sweet 16 win over Texas A&M (who had heroics of their own in OKC) and a 37-point Hield eruption in the Elite Eight over Oregon to send Lon Kruger and the Sooners back to the Final Four for the first time in 14 years. 

Truly one of those memories that will live in the Oklahoma hoops community forever as Hield’s eight three-pointers in the Regional final came in front of his childhood hero Kobe Bryant. 

“It’s special,” Hield told reporters afterward. “As a kid, you dream of having games like this … I’m just happy that we all made it, and we’ve just got to finish it out.”

It was a dream to cover a player like Hield. It was a dream to cover a Final Four. The sting for Sooners fans because of what happened in Houston would be cured by the start of Baker Mania a few months later. But the Hield years on the hardwood were marked by a story of development from freshman to senior year.

Somewhat uncommon in today’s current climate, making it even more special to look back on.

Which leads us to this weekend 

And that’s what makes this time of the year so special. Just having a chance only adds to the dream that comes with the NCAA Tournament. In a sport that certainly has its fair share of ugly. There’s something special that comes with the NCAA Tournament that sets it apart from any of the other scenes in college athletics. A two-week run can change a program. 

OU fans have been longing for this. And while they’ll be underdogs Friday night at the Lenovo Center against two-time defending national champion UCONN, who could have expected this? You sure as hell didn’t. I most certainly did not.

Oklahoma fans have hope. Even if it is minuscule, it’s something. Go make some noise, they say. Sometimes that’s all you can ask for.