There are 7.65 million reasons why Porter Moser’s departure as Oklahoma’s men’s basketball coach would benefit the Sooners.
Speculation is growing that Moser is a top candidate to be the next head coach for the Villanova Wildcats.Villanova just fired Kyle Neptune after he failed to lead the Wildcats to the NCAA Tournament for the third time in three seasons.
These rumors are swirling just a week after Moser seemingly saved his job and extended the Moser era at OU at least another year. The Sooners snuck into the NCAA Tournament for the first time under Moser after winning three games in a row within a week.
- Like Neptune at Villanova, Moser8 also failed to get his team to the NCAA Tournament during his first three seasons leading the program, albeit OU was the first team left out of the field of 68 two of those instances. Just reaching the NCAA Tournament is the standard at OU, just like Villanova.
A chunk of Sooner Nation was already pleading last year for OU to fire Moser in the same timeframe Villanova gave up on Neptune. By the time March began this year, there wasn’t a soul in Sooner Nation vouching for Moser.
In their first season in the SEC, the Sooners finished 6-12 in conference play and 20-13 overall after a 13-0 start during the nonconference slate. The SEC had the best group of basketball teams maybe ever assembled in a conference this season, but that’s not why Moser’s squad struggled so mightily against conference opponents. Every season under Moser, OU has stormed out of the gate before crashing in conference play, even in the Big 12.
The Sooners started SEC play on a four-game losing streak. After winning three of the next four, OU then dropped five in a row. That five-game losing streak included a low point with a home loss to LSU and a 23-point average margin of defeat in the other four games against ranked teams.
