Final Four Week Countdown

Nirvana for me this week as an Oklahoma basketball junkie. The Thunder play four very interesting games against Toronto, Detroit, the Clippers, and Houston. I’m going to assume these four opposing head coaches are going to actually try to win the games unlike the joke on display Saturday night in Oklahoma City.

A compelling week of games for the Thunder. As the rogue Thunder blogger I am, I’ll grind it out and get my recaps done because I’m genuinely excited about the Thunder this week. All four should be quality games and we’ll actually find out tonight if OKC is No. 4 or No. 5 in my next Power Poll.

But I can’t lie, I’ve been watching OU hoops since I was in the seventh grade. My heart is with the Sooners this week. People outside of Oklahoma don’t fully realize how good the basketball has been for the most part since John MacLeod was coaching back in the Fieldhouse days. MacLeod had a nucleus of Scott Martin, Bobby Jack, Garfield Heard, and Clifford Ray. My first love as a basketball fan.

A really good team. My first OU team I became attached to emotionally. Ray and Heard went on to play in the NBA while John MacLeod went on to head coach the Phoenix Suns team which  played the Boston Celtics in an NBA Finals. The series went six games with Boston winning, but many still consider the Game 5 triple overtime thriller as. the greatest NBA game of all-time. Google it. It was simply an amazing game.

Then came a guy named Dave Bliss from Indiana as Bobby Knight’s head assistant. Bliss did a fantastic job at OU in his time here. In the ’78-’79 season he directed the Sooners to the Big 8 championship and a Sweet 16 appearance before bowing out to a team from Indiana State led by one Larry Bird. I can still name that team…John McCullough, Cary Carrabine, Lester Pace, Al Beal, Terry Stotts (current coach of the Trailblazers), and Raymond ‘Juice’ Whitley. Actually–this is my second favorite OU team of all-time because they played so smart.

But the coach who clearly kick started the OU program was Billy Tubbs. Tubbs was a Tulsa guy who had great success at Lamar before coming to OU. He not only changed OU hoops forever, he changed the landscape of the Big 8 and national college ball as well.

People can say all they want about Billy’s style of play, but he was named National Coach of the Year twice at a program where you don’t get the blueblood athletes like Duke, Indiana, North Carolina, and Kansas.

And of course, his ’88 team is not only my favorite OU team of all-time, but my favorite basketball team of all-time. Harvey Grant, Mookie Blalock, Stacy King, Dave Sieger (my favorite player along with Blaylock), and Ricky Grace. The bench went Terence Mullins, Tony Martin, Andre Wiley, Michael Bell, and Jason Skurzinski.

I’d have loved to seen Billy Tubbs coach Durant and Westbrook. Westbrook and Tubbs would have been a trip, but it would have worked. Because both of them hate losing so much.

If you’re an OU fan, that’s the team you’ve never forgotten. The Thunder NBA Finals team is right their with them, but I’ve been watching OU hoops since I was a kid so that team is an emotional thing with me.

Our Final Four is set with OU vs. Villanova in one national semi-final and North Carolina vs. Syracuse in the other semi-final. I’m sure North Carolina is a prohibitive favorite, but you never know because at the college level you only have to win the one game on Monday night, not the best four out of seven.

 

 

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