Around the time Oklahoma was blown out at Florida for a fifth consecutive SEC loss and 3-10 conference record, Sooners coach Porter Moser cleared the deck. 

“Two or three weeks ago we were talking about our mission statement,” Moser said Monday during his pre-SEC Tournament press briefing. “We wanted to play better basketball, to win games and to get in the NCAA Tournament.”

The Sooners have played better since their 85-63 nadir in Gainesville back on Feb. 18. They have won three of their last five games, and put themselves in position to make their first NCAA Tournament since 2021, Lon Kruger’s final season in charge. 

Play well again in Wednesday’s 8:30 p.m. SEC Tournament opening-round matchup against Georgia, and OU should expect to win again. One more win should just about clinch an NCAA bid, given Georgia’s No. 30 NET ranking and the potential, therefore, for the Sooners’ seventh Quad 1 victory of the season.

It will not be easy. Nothing is easy in the SEC. OU went to the mat to beat Mississippi State 93-87, Missouri 96-84 and Texas 76-72 over the past 18 days. 

The No. 14-seed Sooners must work just as hard to beat 11-seed Georgia inside Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena Wednesday night. 

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“They just won four in a row. Four in a row in the SEC,” Moser said of the Bulldogs. “Silas Demary, their point guard, in the last five games he’s up six points in his point average. He’s at 19 a game in this stretch. He is really playing at a high level. 

“They rebound so well. They’re so big and physical. They’re just playing at a high clip, very, very confident.”

The Bulldogs are more confident about March Madness than the Sooners. They are safely in the 68-team field according to bracketologists Joe Lunardi of ESPN and Jerry Palm of CBS. 

OU is among Lunardi’s “Last Four In” and facing a First Four play-in game in his mock bracket. The Sooners await the same fate according to USA Today’s NCAA projection. They are an 11-seed in Palm’s bracket and in Mike DeCourcy’s at Fox Sports.

Winning Wednesday takes care of a lot of conjecture. That means changing the result from Jan. 11, the day OU lost 72-62 at Georgia. 

“We kind of beat ourselves in a sense,” OU leader Jalon Moore said Monday. “I don’t think we were as connected as we are now.”

“I think the outcome will be different the second time around,” Jeremiah Fears said.

Fears can do a lot to assure it is different. He shot 1-for-11 and had more turnovers (4) than points (2) Jan. 11 in Athens. 

Though he didn’t shoot well at Texas last Saturday, Fears did contribute nine free throws and four assists while limiting his turnovers to two. When Moore and teammate, Brycen Goodine, Duke Miles, Glenn Taylor and Luke Northweather all scored in double figures, OU took a giant step toward its most important win of the season.

“To win in this league you’ve gotta have multiple guys producing,” Moser said.

That will certainly be the case this week in Nashville, starting Wednesday night.

“We’re playing together, we’re playing tough, we’re believing. And I think that’s what you want,” Moser said. “You want to be playing your best basketball in February and March.”

A third state is now part of the growing measles outbreak in the U.S.

On Tuesday, health officials in Oklahoma reported two “probable” cases in the state that appear to be linked to the ongoing outbreak in Texas and New Mexico.

According to the Oklahoma State Department of Health, the two people developed measles symptoms after exposure to cases associated with the Texas and New Mexico outbreaks.

The people isolated immediately after they realized they had been exposed and stayed home throughout the period they were contagious, health officials said.

The two cases come as the outbreak in West Texas continues to grow.

On Tuesday, the Texas Department of State Health Services said that 223 measles cases had been confirmed in the state, up from 198 last week. The New Mexico Department of Health reported 33 cases, up from 30, in Lea County, which borders Texas.

Many of the cases developed in unvaccinated children.

“One of my concerns has been around travel,” said Katherine Wells, director of public health at the health department in Lubbock, Texas. “Communicable diseases do not know borders.”

Lubbock is the city where most of the hospitalized children in the outbreak have been treated.

Measles is one of the most contagious viruses on Earth. Unvaccinated people are most at risk for becoming infected, getting sick enough to be hospitalized and die from the virus.

Measles can be prevented with two doses of an MMR vaccine. The first shot is recommended around age 1, and the second shot at the beginning of kindergarten. Two doses are about 97% effective at preventing measles.

Other individual cases unrelated to the West Texas outbreak have also been reported this week, in patients in Maryland and Vermont who had traveled overseas.

“Everybody’s on high alert,” Wells said.

Oklahoma Secretary of Education Ryan Walters suffered a setback for his plan to put state-purchased Bibles in classrooms.

In June, 2024, Walters issued a letter requiring schools “to incorporate the Bible, which includes the Ten Commandments, as an instructional support” in grades 5 through 12. There was pushback almost immediately from superintendents who announced that there would be no such change in their curriculum, along with civil liberties groups, citing the First Amendment guarantee of freedom of religion. Walters has previously written that the separation of church and state is a “radical myth.”

In October, 2024, the lawsuit Rev. Lori Walke v. Ryan Walters was filed on behalf of thirty-two Oklahoma families, teachers and faith leaders. In that same month, the department released the specifications for the Bibles, which appeared to narrow the field down to the Lee Greenwood “God Bless The USA” Bible (list price: $59.95).

In the meantime, Walters asked the legislature for $3 million of taxpayer money for purchasing the Bibles. That request was denied at the beginning of March, and Walters and Greenwood began campaigning for donations to purchase classroom Bibles.

“This Bible mandate is a deliberate power grab that violates Oklahoma law and flouts the separation of church and state,” said Daniel Mach, director of the ACLU Program on Freedom of Religion and Belief. “Public-school students, families, and teachers – and the taxpayers who support them – deserve better.”

According to an ACLU press release, the Court’s order temporarily stayed “work on any new request by the OSDE for the purchase of Bibles.” In addition, the order paused work on a request for proposals issued by OSDE on February 21, 2025. This request for proposals sought suppliers for “supplemental instructional materials that effectively integrate the Bible and character education into elementary-level social studies curriculum.”

Walters has had a contentious few months. Oklahoma teachers have criticized his work, which has also included calling teachers terrorists, pushing for a Catholic charter school (now before the Supreme Court), creating the Office of Religious Liberty and Patriotism, and announcing that office with a video that he required all schools to show–including a prayer. Last month he became involved in a public feud with Governor Kevin Stitt, once a strong Walters supporter.

The plaintiffs in the case are represented by Americans United for Separation of Church and State, the American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Oklahoma Foundation, the Freedom From Religion Foundation and Oklahoma Appleseed Center for Law & Justice. They issued the following statement after the decision.

“This victory is an important step toward protecting the religious freedom of every student and parent in Oklahoma. Superintendent Ryan Walters has been abusing his power and the court checked those abuses today. Our diverse coalition of families and clergy remains united against Walters’s extremism and in favor of a core First Amendment principle: the separation of church and state.”

In a statement after the court order was issued, Walters said, “The Bible has been a cornerstone of our nation’s history and education for generations. We will continue fighting to ensure students have access to this foundational text in the classroom.”

Students are permitted to bring their own Bibles into school, and free copies of the text are available on line. The central question appears to be two-part: should the Bible be required in classrooms, and should taxpayers be required to purchase a particular version.