Sooners face 2-time defending national champion Connecticut tonight

For the first time since 2021, the Oklahoma men’s basketball team is going dancing. Porter Moser’s 20-13 Sooners will play No. 8 seed and twotime defending national Champion Connecticut (23-10) at 7:25 tonight at the Lenovo Center in Raleigh, N.C.

If OU beats the Huskies, who finished in third place in the Big East Conference with a 14-6 record, it will play Sunday against the winner of today’s contest between No. 1 seed Florida (30-4) and No. 16 seed Norfolk State (24-10) in Raleigh.

The Sooners, one of 14 Southeastern Conference teams to make the field, a record for an individual conference, are making their 34 NCAA Tournament appearance and own a 42-33 record. This is OU’s 30th appearance going back to 1983, tied for the 10th most nationally over the last 42 tournaments.

OU’s NCAA Tournament appearance is its first under Moser, who owns a 6-2 NCAA Tournament record. That’s good for the fourth-best winning percentage (.750) among all 2024-25 Division I coaches and the third-best winning percentage among coaches whose teams are in this year’s field (trails just North Carolina’s Hubert Davis [82; .800] and UConn’s Dan Hurley [14-4; .778]). Moser directed Loyola-Chicago to the Final Four in 2018 and to the Sweet 16 in 2021. OU assistant coach Clayton Custer was Loyola’s starting point guard on the 2018 Final Four squad.

Leading the Sooners into tonight’s game will be senior forward Jalon Moore and freshman guard Jeremiah Fears, who will be making their NCAA Tournament debuts. Moore and Fears lead the team with 29 double-digit scoring appearances apiece. Moore has scored at least 20 points 12 times and Fears 11 (five times in the last eight games).

Fears has been especially hot. Over the last eight games, the four-time SEC Freshman of the Week is averaging 22.6 points, 4.9 rebounds and 5.1 assists, and has turned in games of 27, 28, 29 and 31 points. Fears is one of just three Power Four conference players to average at least 17 points, four rebounds, four assists and 1.5 steals per game on the season. The others are Duke’s Cooper Flagg and West Virginia’s Javon Small. tonight’s game will mark OU’s fifth all-time against UConn, with the Sooners holding a 3-1 series record. The teams met four straight years, with the Sooners winning in 2001-02 (69-67 in Hartford), 2002-03 (73-63 in Norman) and 2004-05 (77-65 in Norman). The Huskies’ win came in 2003-04 (86-59 in Storrs, Conn.).

The Sooners are 6-1 in neutral-site games this season, with their only loss coming at the buzzer to Kentucky (8584) in the second round of the SEC Tournament on March 13. OU beat Providence (79-77), No. 24 Arizona (82-77) and Louisville (69-64) on consecutive days in November to win the Battle 4 Atlantis in the Bahamas, trounced Oklahoma State (80-65) in Oklahoma City on Dec. 14, downed No. 24 Michigan (87-86) in the Jumpman Invitational in Charlotte, N.C., on Dec. 18 and handled Georgia on March 12 in the SEC Tournament first round (81-75).

OU has won its opening NCAA Tournament game in each of its last two appearances, in four of its last five and in 11 of its last 16.

OU is tied with Florida for third among the SEC’s 16 programs with five Final Four appearances (Kentucky has 17 and Arkansas six). The Sooners advanced to the Final Four in 1939, 1947, 1988, 2002 and 2016, and played in the national title game in 1947 (lost 58-47 to Holy Cross in New York City) and 1988 (lost 83-79 to Kansas in Kansas City, Mo.). They have advanced to the Sweet 16 on 11 occasions and to the Elite Eight nine times.