CFB Travel Guy

South Alabama vs. Oklahoma

🎶 Sister Jean is not my mother; she’s just a fan who happens to be a nun. She loves the Godhead, three-in-one 🎶

After Loyola-Chicago’s first March Madness upset, she was a story. After the second, she was a sensation.

By the time Loyola-Chicago’s Cinderella run to the 2018 Final Four ended, the 98-year-old hoops-lovin’ nun was a certified icon. Sister Jean became so popular during March Madness that someone created a cheesy song about her set to the tune of Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean.”

The other big winner behind Loyola-Chicago’s storybook moment in the spotlight was its coach, Porter Moser, a basketball lifer who began his coaching career as an assistant at Creighton immediately upon finishing his time as a Bluejays player. After almost three decades of toiling as an assistant and working through the mid-major ranks, the Final Four run made him a household name and gave him legitimacy during coaching searches at name-brand schools. Following another Sweet Sixteen appearance with the Ramblers in 2021, OU pounced and offered Moser a job he couldn’t refuse.

Moser arrived at Oklahoma almost exactly three years following that captivating mid-major run at Loyola Chicago, taking over a Sooners program coming off of a few underwhelming seasons. He was ready to not only provide fresh energy, but to take OU to new heights. He wanted to bring a championship to Norman.

Given the recent legacy of basketball success at Oklahoma, there was reason to be optimistic. OU had produced Naismith Award winners like Blake Griffin and Buddy Hield. They had made multiple NCAA Tournament appearances under future Hall of Fame coaches Kelvin Sampson and Lon Kruger. Aside from a single hire in Jeff Capel that didn’t work out as expected, the Sooners’ program had largely been successful — not a bonafide blueblood like Kansas, but good enough to legitimately contend for Big XII and national titles.

Now the reins have been passed to Moser. Can he carry on the legacy of success and propel the program back into serious title contention?

That was the lingering question as I attended Oklahoma’s early season non-conference matchup with South Alabama. Bedlam would follow the following day in the Palace on the Prairie, but for now, things were relatively quiet.

The Lloyd Noble Center is a good bit south of the heart of campus, so I parked in one of the plentiful parking spaces conveniently located directly adjacent to the arena. The drab concrete slab of a building is almost 50 years old, having broken ground in 1973. Entry was quick and painless, partly due to a scant crowd.

The interior of the arena was perfectly fine, but felt dated — not particularly charming, but also not especially unkempt. It kinda felt like walking into a friend’s childhood home, where his parents have been talking about renovating for 15 years but never pulled the trigger.

It was all sort of bland, with a mostly featureless court area aside from what appeared to be a relatively new-ish central Jumbotron. In that sense, I guess the Noble Center is also comparable to Baylor’s Ferrell Center from last week, but without the knowledge that a shiny new arena on the river is in the works.

Since I arrived about 30 minutes before tip-off, I assumed the red chairbacks of the seating bowl would fill in as gametime neared, but it soon became apparent that my assumptions were incorrect. The crowd remained small and largely unenthusiastic.

While I try to set my expectations low for early-season non-conference games, the student section was almost non-existent and the crowd generally didn’t have a trace of the energy I’ve seen in similar November matchups at Baylor and Virginia (which were still well below their peaks). In all honesty, the most exhilarating part of the game prior to the final 2 minutes of game action was when flame machines were deployed on the court for the starting lineup introductions.

All-in-all, I was a bit surprised and disappointed by the environment at Oklahoma. Yes, it was a “cupcake” game early in the season. Sure, the Sooners haven’t won recent national titles that energize the fan base like Virginia and Baylor. But for a program of OU’s stature, things just felt … off.

I don’t profess to know much of anything about the inner workings of Oklahoma athletics. I don’t know how much priority is put on the basketball program, and I’m not sure how Porter Moser’s time at Oklahoma will turn out.

But what I do know is that Oklahoma fans are capable of packing out ballparks for softball and filling those same 10,967 seats of the Lloyd Noble Center for gymnastics. I also know that both of those programs have won national titles in recent years.

So which side of the chicken-or-the-egg argument is correct? Do OU fans only support programs that win national titles, or is the basketball program’s success perhaps being hindered from competing for titles by a lack of investment and commitment?

If Loyola-Chicago has a Sister Jean, surely there has to be a Sooner Jean out there somewhere. Right?