Sooners must make good on senioritis
Sherri Coale started talking about her 2002 team the other day, and I swear, she got misty eyed.
Rest assured, they were happy tears.
The Oklahoma women’s basketball coach has nothing but fond memories of that squad. It’s not just because those Sooners went to the Final Four and played for a national championship either. Coale also loved the mentality of that senior-dominated team, how it played on edge without going over it, how it found motivation in the last go-around without being frozen by it.
Which brings us to this year’s Sooners.
OU starts NCAA Tournament play on Sunday with a road to the Final Four that starts in Iowa City, Iowa. No matter how many games the Sooners win or how well they fair, these are the final days for a special senior class.
The class headliners, of course, are Courtney and Ashley Paris.
The twins arrived in Norman with such high expectations. Championship expectations. Shoot-the-moon expectations.
But in their first three seasons, the Sooners have failed to make it past the Sweet 16. That’s right. The Sooners have never even made it to the Elite Eight, never even played for a chance to go to the Final Four in the Paris Era.
No doubt there is urgency to change that. The twins want to change it. Ditto for their teammates and their coaches.
Now, the question is how will they use that urgency? Will it be motivation, a fuel to their fire? Or will it be detrimental, an ever-present worry that hangs over this team and maybe even causes it to stumble and fall out of the tournament?
Only the Sooners can answer those questions. But much like the Sooners of 2002, how they respond could be the difference between a premature exit and a glorious end.
It could also be the difference between happy tears and down-right sad ones.
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