NORMAN — For the second year in a row, Oklahoma’s men’s basketball team will partake in a tradition unlike any other in college basketball.
The Sooners will host Alcorn State at McCasland Field House on Saturday for a students-only game. McCasland is a facility on OU’s campus, used traditionally for volleyball, wrestling and gymnastics.
McCasland is a venue with a 5,000-person capacity. It was home to Oklahoma’s men’s basketball team from 1928-1975 before the Sooners moved to the Lloyd Noble Center.
Oklahoma played against Arkansas-Pine Bluff at the McCasland Field House in 2023, which was the first time the Sooners’ men’s basketball team competed there since 2012.
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In almost five decades playing at McCasland, the Sooners won eight conference championships and made two Final Four appearances. The Field House is named after former OU player Howard McCasland, who scored 407 points in the 1915-16 season.
“The atmosphere there, I’m a historian, I love history paving the way for the future,” OU coach Porter Moser said before the 2023 game.
OU basketball legend Alvan Adams, who played at OU from 1972-1975 and was later an NBA All-Star, believes a student-filled McCasland is the perfect setting for a non-conference game.
“Now that I’ve been a younger person and an older person, younger people tend to have more energy to throw out there at any type of event,” Adams told Sooners on SI in 2023. “Whether they’re watching a car race, or OU football, or OU basketball, men’s or women’s. Younger people are gonna have more energy. They’re gonna be a little crazy.”
As for the game, it shouldn’t be particularly close.
Alcorn State enters Saturday 0-10. One of the Braves’ losses came to an NAIA school (Xavier University of Louisiana), and they are ranked No. 358 of 364 NCAA Division I men’s basketball programs in the NET rankings. (The NET rankings are a primary tool for the NCAA Tournament selection committee that sort and rank teams).
The Sooners are also playing really good basketball.
OU (8-0) entered the AP Top 25 for the first time of the 2024-25 season on Monday at No. 21. The Sooners won in their first game as a ranked team on Tuesday, beating Georgia Tech 76-61 at home in the ACC-SEC Challenge.
That win followed up a Battle 4 Atlantis midseason tournament win, as the Sooners beat Providence, Arizona and Louisville in the Bahamas.
OU trailed at halftime of the Georgia Tech game but rallied to stay undefeated.
“I don’t want to say we played tired in the first half but it was a grueling stretch,” Moser said. “They always talk about that MTE (multi-team event) hangover, that’s usually when you take a week off. We didn’t have time to have a hangover.”
With multiple teams ranked ahead of Oklahoma losing this week, the Sooners can rise even higher in the rankings, assuming they can beat Alcorn State.
“I’m liking the resiliency of this group and the finding ways to win,” Moser said. “I love the resolve and the resiliency that we’ve found out going through this stretch.”
