Bedlam basketball: Big loss for OSU

After the Bedlam basketball game, I wrote what most everyone else probably thought after the game: that the OU victory, while perhaps not saving the Sooner season, at least kept OU from totally crashing, while the OSU defeat didn’t hurt the Cowboys as much as it would have crippled the Sooners.

That’s generally the case for a road team. The home team needs to win more.

Tony Crocker (5) tries to block a shot by Marshall Moses (33) during the second half of the college bedlam basketball game in which The University of Oklahoma Sooners (OU) defeated Oklahoma State University University Cowboys (OSU) 62-57 in overtime at the Lloyd Noble Center on Monday, Jan. 11, 2010, in Norman, Okla. Photo by Steve Sisney, The Oklahoman. ORG XMIT: KOD

But on Tuesday morning, here’s another way to look at it. Can the OU season be saved? And where will OSU’s road victories come from?

You never know, a team can turn things around, but right now, the NCAA Tournament looks beyond these Sooners’ grasp. They are 10-6 overall, 1-1 in the Big 12. They’ve been blown out at Baylor and won at home in overtime against a team that had to sit its best player, James Anderson, for five minutes in the first half because of foul trouble and for five minutes in the second half because of a blow to the head, and even upon return Anderson was not well. That team, OSU, shot 27.5 percent from the field and had a senior go 1-for-12 from the field. And still the Sooners struggled to win.

Can OU somehow get to the 10-6 conference record needed to make the NCAAs? Or even 9-7, which would at least put the Sooners into the discussion? Winning Monday night was mandatory, so in that way it was a season-saver, but realistically? Still looks dim for the Sooners. This team has a 4-12 or 5-11 Big 12 record written all over it.