Name: The University of Oklahoma
Location: Norman, Oklahoma
I’m bad at geography: For a long time, I thought Norman was somewhere out in the sticks of Oklahoma because it’s not Oklahoma City or Tulsa. Turns
out, Norman is just a far south suburb of Oklahoma City. Ignore the direction aspect of it, but it’s kind of like if the University of Wisconsin was in Sun Prairie or Middleton instead of in Madison proper.
Now, Stillwater? Where Oklahoma State is? THAT’S in the sticks.
Founded: 1890, 17 years before Oklahoma was admitted to the Union. That was when the Oklahoma Territory legislature established the school alongside the agriculture school in Stillwater and the teacher’s college in Edmond. There wouldn’t be students enrolled at what was then Norman Territorial University until 1892, and the name of University of Oklahoma came along with statehood in 1907.
Enrollment: 32,662 students for Fall 2025, including 25,054 undergraduates.
As to whether or not they graduate on time: Apparently the rumor is that if you walk under the Clock Tower on campus, you won’t finish your degree in four years. I don’t know about you guys, but I’m very much a sucker for stories about how a part of campus is CURSED in this manner.
And if there’s a cursed part of campus, then there has to be a charmed part of campus: Let me introduce you to the Spoonholder, which was originally built as a memorial for the Class of 1910, then eventually worn down over the years and then demolished in 1983, but restored to campus by the Class of 1999.
Straight from the official campus traditions page:
The name “Spoonholder” refers to an old dating practice where mates would sit side by side with one’s arm over the other as they gazed at the stars together. It is a campus myth that if you kiss someone sitting in the Spoonholder, you are destined to marry that person later in life.
I like the “later in life,” which somehow implies “I didn’t say any time soon.”
Nickname: Sooners
Why “Sooners”? Same reason that the state of Oklahoma is nicknamed The Sooner State: Cheating, essentially.
Sooners became the word used to describe people who did not adhere to the rules and laws associated with the Land Rush of 1889. The land grab was scheduled to start at noon on April 22, 1889, but some people entered the area in question early to swipe what they believed to be prime sections of real estate before anyone else could get there.
I only realized this recently, but of course Oklahomans love football. The entire sport is about shifting your position on land as quickly as possible and taking up more of it than your competitors want you to take and also stopping the competitors from taking any at all. If that’s not the heart of the Sooner mindset, I don’t know what is.
Okay, but why is their fight song “Boomer Sooner”? Sooners are technically a subset of Boomers, people who were just interested in the expansion and settlement of the American west, and perhaps specifically this part of the continent.
By the way: This is all land stolen from several native tribes over and over again.
And now for something completely different: Here’s the Sooner Schooner, being pulled by horses named Boomer and Sooner, tipping over because they took a turn too tight.
OFFICIAL MASCOT LORE: The Sooner Schoner was named Oklahoma’s official mascot in 1980. Boomer and Sooner — not the live horses pulling the wagon, two guy-in-suit mascots — were debuted in 2005. Top Daug was introduced as a basketball mascot in the mid-1980s, because, y’know, you can’t have horses running around on a basketball court. Top Daug “retired” in the wake of the debuts of Boomer and Sooner, but made his triumphant return in January 2020 and is still listed as an official OU mascot.
Interestingly, the Schooner is not on that Official Mascots page, but technically, the RUF/NEKS in charge of the Schooner aren’t the same as the cheerleading team, and generally speaking the guy-in-suit mascots are with the cheer team.
Notable Alumni: Apollo 13 astronaut Fred Haise; pro wrestlers Wahoo McDaniel & Dr. Death Steve Williams; Rick Rescorla, director of security for Morgan Stanley responsible for the office evacuation of World Trade Center Tower 2 on September 11th, saving thousands of lives; actress Olivia Munn; federal judge Alfred P. Murrah, probably better known for being the namesake of the federal building that was bombed by Timothy McVeigh & Terry Nichols in 1995; Academy Award winning actor Van Heflin; Pat Bowlen, former owner of the Denver Broncos; celebrity chef Rick Bayless; former Screen Actor’s Guild president Dennis Weaver; and finally, Clay Bennett, the guy who stole the Supersonics from Seattle.
Musical Variety: Oklahoma has five official state songs. They have an official waltz, an official folk song, an official children’s song, and an official gospel song. However, the original and official official state song, is Oklahoma from the 1943 Rogers & Hammerstein musical of the same name. I think it’s kind of neat that the state legislature told a different song to get lost in 1953.
Anyway, here’s Oklahoma as performed by Hugh Jackman when he played Curley on the London stage in 1998.
That’s a slightly truncated version, so here’s the 1979 cast recording.
Last Season: 20-14, with a 6-12 record in the SEC. That was still good enough to get to the NCAA tournament for the first time since 2021 as a #9 seed, but they lost to UConn in the first round.
Final 2024-25 KenPom.com Ranking: #40 out of 364 teams
Final 2024-25 BartTorvik.com Ranking: #51 out of 364 teams
Preseason Poll: Oklahoma was picked to finish 12th in the 16 team SEC this season by a vote of the media, although I have to trust Florida’s word on this because the SEC’s website stinks when trying to find older news stories.
This Season: 4-2, with four wins over teams ranked somewhere lower than #300 in the KenPom.com rankings and losses to #3 Gonzaga and #39 Nebraska.
Current KenPom.com Ranking: #65, down from their preseason position of #58
Current BartTorvik.com Ranking: #45, down from their opening night position of #31
Returning Stats Leaders
Points: Dayton Forsythe, 4.3 ppg
Rebounds: Mohamed Wague, 3.1 rpg
Assists: Dayton Forsythe, 1.0 apg
Current Stats Leaders
Points: Nijel Pack, 18.5 ppg
Rebounds: Tae Davis, 7.5 rpg
Assists: Xzayvier Brown, 3.2 apg
Head Coach: One-time possible Marquette coaching target Porter Moser, in his fifth season with the Sooners. He has a record of 77-61 with Oklahoma, and 370-303 overall as a Division 1 head coach, including stops at Loyola Chicago, Illinois State, and Little Rock.
Bigs? Leading returning rebounder Mohamed Wague is the starter in the middle for the Sooners at 6’10” and 225 pounds. That’s a little bit more towards Tall Man than Big Man, but when you’re one of the 40 best offensive rebounders in the country according to KenPom.com, we’ll let you have Big Man status.
That’s also kind of it for Oklahoma. Current leading rebounder — and former Seton Hall Pirate! — Tae Davis starts and plays nearly 28 minutes a night for OU at 6’9” and 215 pounds. He’s a top 50 offensive rebounder per KenPom, so clearly that’s something that’s going to be a problem for the Golden Eagles even if Davis maybe isn’t a traditional big by stature. Wisconsinite Kai Rogers is here as well, listed at 6’10” and 247 pounds. He didn’t play in the opener, and he tallied just seven combined minutes against Gonzaga and Nebraska in those losses. Kuol Atak is averaging nearly 13 minutes per game at 6’9” and 192 pounds, but he saw just nine minutes of action against Oral Roberts on November 20th and only just barely subbed in long enough to register a presence against Alcorn State on Sunday.
Shooters? Marquette can not, under any circumstances, let Nijel Pack get into a rhythm. Now in his sixth season of college basketball, the guy who gained a whole bunch of attention for how much money the Miami Hurricanes were throwing at him is a career .408 three-point shooter, and he’s doing his career average a favor so far this year. Pack is splashing 48% of his career high nine three-point attempts per game right now, and he’s 15-for-29 (51.7%!) in their last three games. Luckily-ish, Pack lost two inches in transit from Miami to Oklahoma, and now he’s listed at 5’10” instead of 6’0”. That could, in theory, make it a little bit easier for Marquette, specifically Nigel James, to defend Pack. Nigel vs Nigel violence!
I’m guessing that Pack’s shooting is helping open things up for his teammates. Dayton Forsythe is at 47% on 2.5 attempts per game, Xzayvier Brown is at 37% on 4.5 attempts, and Kuol Atak has found a way to average 3.8 tries per contest in his 12.7 minutes per night, but hey: If you’re shooting just under 35%, fire it up, m’man.
Oklahoma also has three guys who have played in all six games and attempt at least two threes per outing…. but all shoot somewhere under 23%. I don’t know if there’s a way to trick Derrion Reid, Jeff Nwankwo, and Tae Davis to shoot until their arms fall off in this game, but the stats suggest that it’s not the worst idea.
What To Watch For: It would seem that this game may come down to whether or not Marquette can induce turnovers from Oklahoma. The Sooners have shooters, and they’re pretty good at scoring when they get the ball inside, too. Combine that with the 20th lowest turnover rate in the country according to KenPom.com at just a touch over 13%, and boom: That’s one of the 35 most efficient offenses in the country. On the other side of things, Marquette’s defense is not good as a whole. Opponents are just a little too good at getting inside to score against the Golden Eagles, and each of Marquette’s losses have come as a result of giving up at least 50% shooting on two-pointers. Those three losses have also seen the other guys shoot at least 36% from behind the arc, and those two things combine for MU giving up a 60% or worse effective field goal percentage in all three games.
We can’t say that the Dayton game might have gone differently if Marquette had forced more turnovers, as the Flyers gave it away more than 30% of the time. But we can at least suggest that more turnovers would have helped against Indiana and Maryland. At this point of the year, MU is getting a turnover on over 21% of all of their possessions, which is ranked #50 in the country right now on KenPom. If Marquette can get Oklahoma to that point — something that the Sooners will generally not tend towards in the first place — then that can take the bite out of OU’s shooting abilities. That might mean not just eliminating shots that get in the air in the first place, but also putting a little bit extra pressure to make shots on Nijel Pack, Dayton Forsythe, and Xzayvier Brown.
That’s the math of it.
The feelings of it is that I think we need to see a Marquette team that is upset about how their season has gone so far. Three losses in a manner that goes against the kind of play that Shaka Smart preaches for his team. A lackluster win over what appears to be a not good Central Michigan team to follow up back to back losses in home games that were absolutely there for Marquette to win both of them.
It’s the lack of appearing to try to impose a will on Central Michigan that bothers me the most about that game. I would have thought that the team would be visibly annoyed with how the Maryland and Dayton games ended by the time that Central Michigan came to town, and instead, it certainly felt like a team that was sleepwalking or going through the motions or something similar. One thing we haven’t questioned in Shaka Smart’s tenure as head coach so far is the level to which his teams are getting Lost In The Fight, to use Smart’s own phrasing. I didn’t see a Marquette team that was doing all that much fighting against CMU, especially not in the wake of the losses.
Maybe Oklahoma wins on Friday, KenPom.com projects it as a coin toss. But the worst case scenario should be that game ending with OU head coach Porter Moser praising every deity in sight that his Sooners were able to get out of that game with a win because Marquette was taking it to them for 40 minutes.
All Time Series: This is the first ever meeting between Marquette and Oklahoma.
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