Quick Blurbs - Why the Sooners Aren't Elite

Oklahoma is a 1 loss team, undefeated in conference play, and ranked 2nd in the nation in both the AP and coaches' polls. Spearheaded by a NBA lottery pick in Blake Griffin who KenPom loves on the basis of his overall efficiency, terrific Rebounding% numbers and an almost Hansborough-like ability to get to the foul line, the Sooners find themselves as the disappointing 18th most efficient team in the nation and the 10th team most likely to win it all despite being projected as a coveted #1 seed. The Sooners have played a legitimate schedule(52nd), with more of it to come so it's not as if they haven't gotten these wins against Dance-level competition. What is the disconnect?

Favored by 20 in Vegas(I will start to include these as well in my analysis, I think it's a good secondary metric to my model) and by 20.6 in our model, the Sooners beat Colorado(144th) by only 5 pts today - a 15 pt underperfomance of already low expectations. This underperfomance would had been equivalent to Depaul(192nd) upsetting Pittsburgh(4th) at home today.

Granted, you can cherry pick bad games from any elite team's resume, but the reason Oklahoma is ranked surprisingly low is that they have significantly more of these good, but not top 5 performances in their history. It just happens that in their case, these mediocre performances are disguised as close wins against middling or weak competition:

Date Opponent(Rank), Expectation(Result, Amount Underperfomance)

11/22 v.Gardner Webb(208th), Oklahoma -26.9 (Win by 4, 22.9 pt Underperfomance)
12/22 @Rice(258th), Oklahoma -22.1 (Win by 12, 10.1 pt Underperfomance)
12/30 @Arkansas(114th), Oklahoma -11.2 (Lost by 8, 19.2 pt Underperformance)
2/7 v.Colorado(144th), Oklahoma -20.6 (Win by 5, 15.6 pt Underperfomance)

*Some would argue that it doesn't matter what you do against bad teams as long as you win, but that is the topic of another article that has already been written many times. Here, it is suffice to say that it does matter to the point where if you're only edging out bad teams, it does not predict well of your chances against elite teams.

It's important that these expectations are for Oklahoma or teams similar to the Sooners such as Clemson, Purdue, or Arizona St. If Griffins' and Co. really wanted to be graded on an elite scale - Pittsburgh/Connecticut/Duke/North Carolina, you can tack on 3-5 pts(depends on the pace of the team) to the expected win amount.

None of the aforementioned teams have a loss as bad as @Arkansas, and the data shows they don't have as many underperfomances either.

Worst Losses:
Duke: @Michigan(67th)
UNC: v.Boston College(63rd)
Connecticut: v.Georgetown(23rd)
Pittsburgh: @Villanvoa(15th)
Memphis: v.Syracuse(35rd)
UCLA: N-Michigan(67th)

It's important to remember that the Sooners have a slew of good wins(N-UAB, N-Purdue, v.Utah, @Kansas St, v.Texas), and have their share of blowouts against mediocre teams[29 pt win v. American(115th)] and even good teams as well[(19 pt win v.Baylor(45th)]. I wouldn't be surprised if they started to exceed these expectations(I would lean on the over) or even made a deep run in the tournament. However, their current overall body of work and thus expectations indicates they are closer to teams like Clemson, Wake Forest, Washington, and Xavier, than they are to the North Carolinas and Connecticuts of the world. And like those first 4 teams, making it to the Elite 8 would be running good - not bad.