Picture a football school where the new head basketball coach is told his top priority has to be getting the students interested in hoops again. That is the situation that Oklahoma found itself in when Lon Kruger took the job in 2011.
Kruger is now in his fifth season in Norman, Oklahoma, and there's a case to be made that the OU basketball program has been on an upward trajectory ever since his arrival. That being said, the program's ascendance certainly hasn't been without its own surprises and twists.
In particular, Kruger has brought Oklahoma to the threshold of a No. 1 seed by doing two things that go against "the book" of college basketball's accepted wisdom. First, OU has largely opted out of (or failed to succeed in) the pursuit of the nation's top-ranked recruits. And, the Sooners' success in 2015-16 has been built overwhelmingly on just one facet of the game, the 3-point shot.