ARE YOU among the heartsick Oklahoma basketball fans who are desperate for a bit of good news about their favorite team, which can't seem to catch a danged break these days?
No problem. I have just what the doctor ordered for what ails you: May 24, 2007.
Keep the faith OU hoopheads, because nearly two years after the fact, that date may go down in Sooner history. It could be remembered as the day that saved OU's once-promising season from unraveling because of one bad break after another.
On that Thursday, at the Broadmoor Resort in Colorado Springs, Colo., the Big 12 Conference's board of directors finally agreed to move the men's basketball tournament championship game from Sunday to Saturday, beginning with the 2008-09 season.
The league's leaders acquiesced after a decade of begging from coaches. The move to Saturday was made for one gigantic reason — to give the NCAA Tournament's selection committee more time to evaluate Big 12 teams as it selects, seeds and brackets the 65-team tournament field.
For the first 12 years of the Big 12 basketball tournament, holding the title game on Selection Sunday meant it ended less than an hour before the NCAA Tournament bracket was revealed.
And every year, the selection chairman would confirm that the Big 12 title
contest was played too late to be part of the committee's thought process in picking and seeding teams.
That Sunday policy drove former OU coach Kelvin Sampson crazy. Although they didn't win the regular-season title, Sampson's Sooners won three consecutive Big 12 tournament championships from 2001 to 2003.
Sampson always held out hope that three wins in as many days would make an impression in the NCAA Tournament seeding process. But it never happened, because the selection committee refused to wait and include the Big 12 title contest in the decision-making process..
Big 12 officials for years ignored the begging from Sampson and many of his conference peers to move the championship game to Saturday. The league had signed a lucrative television contract, which specified the Big 12 title contest serve as the lead into the Selection Sunday show.
Wiser heads finally prevailed during those 2007 spring meetings in Colorado. The new television contract with ESPN stipulated that starting in 2009, the Big 12 title game would start at 5 p.m. Saturday, after the Atlantic Coast Conference tournament's semifinals and before the Big East Conference's championship game.
Less than a week ago, that 2007 decision didn't figure to affect OU. The Sooners, 25-1 overall and 11-0 in the Big 12, didn't care what day the Big 12 championship was contested because they appeared to be a lock for a No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament.
The switch now looms large for the Sooners, as does the site for the conference tournament.
A head injury to All-American center Blake Griffin, which resulted in two consecutive losses, suddenly means the Sooners could wind up benefiting from that switch more than any other Big 12 team.
And it certainly won't hurt the Sooners' chances that the 13th annual Big 12 men's tournament will be held March 11-14 at the Ford Center in Oklahoma City.
Losses last Saturday at Texas and at home Monday to Kansas cost OU first place in the Big 12 regular-season race. KU (12-1) moved into sole possession of first, with OU and Missouri tied for second at 11-2.
To break KU's four-year stranglehold on the regular-season title, OU needs to sweep its final three games at Texas Tech and Missouri and the OU-OSU finale at home against Oklahoma State. The Sooners then must hope KU loses two of its last three against Missouri, at Texas Tech and Texas.
In reality, the defending national champion Jayhawks' win Monday probably wrapped up their fifth consecutive Big 12 title. And that scenario makes OU's game a week from today at Missouri (23-4, 10-2) critical, because the winner probably will finish second to KU and be the league's No. 2 at the Ford Center.
With Griffin back in the lineup, OU should enter the Big 12 tournament as the favorite even if it doesn't win the regular-season crown. The selection committee undoubtedly will take the concussion Griffin sustained early in the Texas game under consideration when it decides if the Sooners