In a game that may end up being one of the most consequential of the season in terms of NCAA Tournament bubble prospects, the Oklahoma Sooners went to Austin and came away with a 76-72 win over the Texas Longhorns on Saturday night. The biggest lead either team was able to build all night was just six points, which makes Texas freshman Tre Johnson’s 0-for-14 shooting performance even harder to stomach if you’re a Longhorns fan.
‘0-for-14’ is not a misprint. Yes, Johnson remains the leading scorer in the SEC, but against the Sooners, he was limited to just 7 points, his lowest output of the season, on a perfect 7-for-7 from the free throw line. So how did Oklahoma keep the 20-point-per-game scorer in check in a way that nobody else has this year? Sooners head coach Porter Moser explains:
#Sooners coach Porter Moser on how OU defended Texas’ Tre Johnson tonight.
The projected lottery pick was 0 for 14 from the field. pic.twitter.com/9DAnHEn13p
— Colton Sulley (@colton_sulley) March 9, 2025
“We really talked about doing it possession by possession. You can’t take plays off with him. It was a possession by possession thing trying to run multiple guys at him,” Moser noted. “It wasn’t just one man and your on an island to guard him. You can’t just do one man on an island to try to guard Tre Johnson. We were trying to stick plug, run multiple guys at him. It was a group effort.”
Even with the win over Texas on Saturday night, Oklahoma’s NCAA Tournament hopes still hang by a thread. The Sooners are the 14-seed in the SEC Tournament, and would need to win five games in five days if they were to clinch the conference’s automatic bid. In a conference as deep and talented as the SEC, this feels impossible, but Porter Moser knows a little something about improbable tournament runs.
It was just six years ago when Porter Moser, then the head coach at Loyola Chicago, led the Ramblers to the Final Four as an 11-seed in the NCAA Tournament. In his fourth season at Oklahoma, Moser is still on the hunt for his first NCAA Tournament appearance with the Sooners.
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