KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Greek mythology doesn’t come into play much in men’s college basketball. But for Oklahoma coach Jeff Capel, the 2009-10 season felt a lot like a Sisyphean task.
Sisyphus was cursed to roll a huge boulder up a hill, only to watch it roll back down. He had to repeat the task throughout eternity.
Capel’s curse only lasted five months. It just felt like eternity coaching the Sooners through a 13-18 season.
“This is uncharted water for me as a coach. This is the toughest year since my first year here. This is different for me,” he said.
OU went 16-15 in Capel’s first season in 2006-07, but there were major differences. That team was light on talent, but big on heart. Effort was never an issue for that bunch. Once it got a great player into the fold — Blake Griffin — the Sooners took off the next two seasons.
Talent wasn’t the issue for the Sooners this season. It was everything else that doomed them. Things like defense, rebounding, hustle, a will to win were all absent.
Players and Capel both point to last summer as the source of this season’s collapse. After two years of all players being in Norman for summer workouts, this group splintered after reaching the Elite Eight.
All the involuntary things players used to do were no longer treated as mandatory.
“Some things arose. Complications were there. And it showed,” junior guard Cade Davis said. “It may not have all been a direct result of that, but you just remember stuff like that. Hopefully we’ll have a good summer and things will be a lot different.”
Capel believes it’s the only way things can turn around. But it’s also something beyond his control. According to NCAA rules, offseason workouts are voluntary.
“There has to be something inside these guys that says they don’t want to have a season like this again,” he said.
That requires leadership, something OU missed this season.
Tony Crocker and Willie Warren didn’t provide it and a team that routinely played four true freshmen — Tiny Gallon, Tommy Mason-Griffin, Andrew Fitzgerald and Stephen Pledger — desperately needed it.
Instead, OU was a team that seemed to just wait for a point to unravel at the first sign of adversity during any game.
That was very evident over the final month of the season. The nine-game losing streak featured everything from blowouts to tight games where OU let second-half leads slip away.
“We need a leader. This year there wasn’t a leader. It was just a team playing basketball,” Gallon said. “Next year we need a vocal leader. I’m going to try to step up, or it will be somebody else.”
But how OU tries to rebuild from this season’s rubble is the real question.
Warren, who led the team in scoring at 16.3 points a game, is likely to enter the NBA draft. He has until next month to decide. Warren told The Transcript Monday it would depend on how his injured ankle heals. But Capel doesn’t think it will be an issue.
“His ankle will be fine,” Capel said Wednesday. “It wasn’t like it was major reconstructive surgery. He’ll be fine.”
Gallon and Mason-Griffin have both said they were at least thinking about entering the NBA Draft. Gallon said Tuesday and following Wednesday’s game he would return for next season. Mason-Griffin said he wanted to talk to Capel before making a definitive decision, but he was leaning toward returning.
The advice he’ll get from his coach won’t turn him in the professional direction.
“There was one NBA player on that that floor tonight. That was (Oklahoma State’s) James Anderson and he didn’t even play well,” Capel said Wednesday night.
Above all else, attitudes will have to change for the Sooners to return to competitiveness in the Big 12 Conference and nationally.
The previous two seasons the program seemed to be building toward bigger things. This season was obviously a regression. It was also a learning experience.
“I learned a lot this year about what not to do and how not to do things. I learned a lot of things from last season,” Capel said. “Hopefully, the guys that will be returning for us next year and the guys we have coming in will not want this to happen.
“Hopefully, there will be a competitive spirit and sense of pride individually and as a group where you don’t want this to happen. You don’t want to feel this way again.”
John Shinn 366-3536 jshinn@normantranscript.com
