OU Basketball: Oklahoma Stays Put in AP Poll, Cracks Top 10 in Coaches Poll

The Sooners enter their first season in the Southeastern Conference with an undefeated record and will open league play against Alabama on Saturday.

BRYAN TERRY/THE OKLAHOMAN / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

Despite finishing the non-conference portion of its season undefeated, Oklahoma stayed in the same position in the AP Top 25 heading into SEC play.

The Sooners are No. 12 in the latest poll, released Monday. That’s the same ranking OU held a week ago after being ranked No. 14 the week prior.

OU played just one game in the last week, beating Prairie View A&M 89-67 on Sunday. That win, unsurprisingly, didn’t do much to wow voters, as the Panthers are 1-12 and haven’t defeated a Division I opponent in the 2024-25 season.

OU Basketball: Oklahoma Sails Past Prairie View A&M, Finishes Non-Conference Undefeated

The week before, the Sooners defeated Michigan 87-86 at the Jumpman Invitational in Charlotte before comfortably beating Central Arkansas 89-66 at home a few days later.

In the Sooners’ first 13 games, they took down six opponents from major conferences: Providence, Arizona, Louisville, Georgia Tech, Oklahoma State and Michigan. Both Arizona and Michigan were ranked No. 24 at the time of Oklahoma’s wins against those programs.

While OU didn’t move in the AP poll, the Sooners saw a jump to No. 10 in the USA Today Coaches Poll. A week ago, OU was ranked No. 11.

Oklahoma remained at No. 37 in the KenPom rankings, the exact place where the Sooners stood the previous two weeks. The Sooners moved up one spot from No. 42 to No. 41 in the NET rankings this week.

KenPom uses Pythagorean expectation to rank all 364 teams in NCAA Division I basketball, while the NET rankings are used heavily by the NCAA Tournament selection committee to determine which teams receive at-large bids to the tourney.

While the Sooners have collected several quality wins already en route to the 13-0 start, the gauntlet of their regular season begins now.

OU will battle Alabama — its first conference game as an SEC member — on Jan. 4 to open league play. That’s the first of an 18-game SEC schedule for the Sooners.

The SEC has held a reputation of being a dominant football and baseball conference in recent memory, but this year, the league is arguably the best in men’s college basketball.

Oklahoma is one of 10 teams from the SEC ranked in the latest AP poll, along with Tennessee (No. 1), Auburn (2), Alabama (5), Florida (6), Kentucky (10), Texas A&M (13), Mississippi State (17), Arkansas (23) and Ole Miss (24). Georgia and Missouri are also receiving votes in the latest poll.

All 16 programs from the SEC are ranked within the top 90 of the NET rankings, with South Carolina (No. 85) being the lowest. This means that OU — and other SEC squads — will be able to greatly improve their tournament resumes with strong conference seasons.

Three of the four remaining teams in Division I college basketball hail from the SEC in Tennessee, Florida and Oklahoma. The only other team with a perfect record thus far is Drake, which received 100 votes in this week’s poll, the second most of any team not ranked.

Oklahoma’s first SEC game at the Lloyd Noble Center will be on Jan. 8 against No. 13 Texas A&M.