March badness sinks in<br/><span class='hl2'>OU doesn't look like a team headed for NCAA glory</span>

NORMAN — The alarm should have sounded about the fifth time Jenna Plumley or Danielle Robinson or Amanda Thompson fired a pass into the Lloyd Noble Center seats.

Or when it took almost eight minutes of game action for one of Courtney Paris' teammates to score or rebound while she was on the court.

Or maybe the alarm rang when someone noticed the calendar and saw that it's March. It's getting late in this college basketball season.

And Sherri Coale's Sooners are playing like this?

OU's women's basketball team played one of the worst games of the Coale renaissance, a 27-turnover, passionless, 65-50 loss to eighth-place Texas.

Cold reality is starting to sink in. The clock ticks on Paris' career. She's hitting the homestretch of her junior season with nary a Sweet 16 victory, and none seems likely this season. Not after this game. Not with this team.

The NCAA Tournament committee almost surely will give the Sooners a crimson path (the Ford Center) when Selection Monday arrives two weeks from today.

But screaming fans can't help that much; 9,553 zealots didn't save the Sooners on Sunday, when OU changed its recent script of one bad half by producing two.

"One loss doesn't determine our season,” Thompson said bravely, but very soon, that will not be the case. Very soon, it's win-or-die. And die it will be if the Sooners play anything close to this.

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