Porter Moser, Oklahoma Head Coach

Alrighty, welcome back in inside the Convention Center. This is Westwood One's Radio Row. It is the Zach Gelb Show Coast to Coast on the Infinity Sports Network. And now joining us is a good friend of the radio program. He is the head men's basketball coach at Oklahoma here today on behalf of the American Cancer Society Coaches versus Cancer, and that is Porter Moser.

Coach, how are you? Zach, my friend, it's good seeing you. You had me on when I was at Loyola, and I appreciate you, my friend. This has got to be a little sentimental for you coming back to this town in San Antonio because that Loyola Chicago team that you went to the Final Four with, this is where the road did end for you guys. No, I rolled in last night, and it was nostalgic. But I will tell you, it's a lot nicer rolling in on a team bus and an Uber. I'd rather be playing in this thing. And that's for sure.

I've always said this. We always remember the great run to the Final Four. But then a few years later, your final season, when you got to the Sweet Sixteen, was that in a way a little bit more rewarding, even though you didn't get further in the tournament, but it was just a sustained success that you could get to the second weekend once again.

Zach, it's exactly what it was. And for me, you know, going to the Final Four of Loyola, I mean, the previous 30 years, they had 26 losing seasons, and we built it up with great group of guys. And there was there was opportunities, but I just didn't want to I didn't want to run from happy. I was happy.

I'm from Chicago. But there was something inside me that just didn't want to be a fluke. I wanted to do it again. But it's hard because you're in a one bid league, you're in a league where you got to win your tournament. And like, after that, then we had COVID. And then we won it the league again, but then we didn't win the tournament.

And then in 21. It was a whole new team, except two guys. So it wasn't like we did it with what we did with a whole new team. And we were, we had to play Georgia Tech, the first round. And well, actually, in Chicago, we had to play Illinois was in the second everyone wanted to talk about Yeah, that's up. And I'm like, guys, Georgia, great defensive game. I had the under.

I didn't hear that. But we'd like to beat the ACC tournament champion first. And then they were Illinois was the number one seed in the whole tournament with Kofi. And we were able to beat them. And we thought we were we had then we had to be Oregon State. And we came out and they had this huge zone. And they were on that crazy run. And we lost to Oregon State.

And you guys were in the bubble, right? Yeah. Because I remember, you tweeted out the bracket that was on the hotel.

Yes. And you go, this is the hotel room view. And you sent me a few Loyola Chicago shirts. And I had this Photoshop done with the cam crutwick mustache. And then my people, they put it up on the hotel. And they said, this is a better view for you. So that was, you know, bad time in the world, obviously, the whole world was changing. But in a weird way that the team coming together like that must have been pretty neat looking back. It was the most unique thing because they had the two Marriot's together.

And like they had two or three rooms, or floors of ballrooms. And everyone is you're sitting there next to the like, it was, you know, Houston, like one thing, your opponent, your opponent, everyone's right there. And I remember, though, I went in like, all right, if you lose, you got to get your crap and get out of here. And it was all that quick. Oh, it was like crazy. Like game after game, you're sitting in a hotel, we had so that everyone walking out with their lungs, their head down, like get on for a bubble, that bubble.

I'm a reality TV hunk. It seems like you know, you get voted off the island, you pack up your bags, and then boom, you're out Porter Moser here with us. So you made the tournament at Oklahoma this year.

When you look back at the season, how do you kind of reflect? I think it'll be you know, your coach to pour into young people. And I just think these guys will have life lessons rest their life because they fought through hard. They fought through hard the ups and downs we had. We started out the season 13 and 10th in the country, we beat Arizona second in the Big 12 beat Michigan, won the second the Big 10 won the tournament and beat Louisville second ACC. So the other three power schools, we had great non conference wins. We go in, we go right into the league, we start out, hey, welcome to the SEC, you're going to start at Alabama. So yeah, and we go on a run of losing. We're at Florida at Alabama at Auburn. Like that's not good Auburn right before the start of the NCAA tournament. They lost three out of four.

And I was one of those pumpkins. And I love Bruce Pearl. I love Auburn.

But I was like, they're not trending in the right direction. But it's the SEC for crying out loud. Exactly right. And that's the thing is there's no good four game stretch.

There's none. It's all top 25 teams. So mentally, we went from being 10th in the country to get hit in the face. And we had to pick ourselves up. And the fight through hard and what these guys did on just just a daunting schedule. I mean, it's just every single night you got three days later, you got to prepare for another top 10 team. Where's Oklahoma heading under your watch?

Great. It's a great trending, you know, because of and I'll be honest, and I Oh, when when you the revenue shares actually going to help us, some people think it's gonna hurt them. But it's actually helping us because you have to have you have to win in April and May.

You have to win in April, May, if you want to win in February, March. And it's just the reality of it. And you're seeing it going on right now. So to get your infrastructure of NIL, powerful and moving in the right direction helps you win in April and May. And this is what I think we're trending right on the first couple of years. And we were the last ones out the previous two when that was, I think we've really done some things. And now I feel like we're going to have more resources in that revenue share, and jumped up back to back 21 seasons got to the tournament. And like all of us, you know, I know we got that's not my end goal.

My end goal is to roll in on a team bus this weekend. So you know, the coaching carousel. It's crazy, right? We saw your name floated out there for Villanova. Even when I googled you this morning, you hear about a&m and things like that. What do you say the Oklahoma fan that's like culture? Are you are you going to stay here?

Are we gonna have you here? This thing with Oklahoma, you know, the last couple years, you kind of kept seeing that there's been some things up in the Midwest. But the people in Oklahoma are special.

It's one of the greatest places I've lived. And it's just what you're fighting to get the resources right. And we are we're moving in that right direction. And for what we had to do to fight through hard this year, because it is what I said about the lessons these guys learn these, you know, there's a lot of people that countered us out. There's a lot of people in and I was like Bill Murray on Groundhog Day. Every day I was standing in front of you guys, there's a path, there's a path, we got opportunities, every game's quad one.

And then, you know, you just have to keep bouncing yourself up. But we fought through hard. And we're going to continue to fight through that. And there's just such opportunities, such a high vision of what we can do being in this SEC.

And, and we're looking forward to it. What do you take away in replacing long Krueger? Because right, John Shire had to replace coach Yeshefsky. You know, people always say, you always don't want to be the guy that replaces the guy you want to be the next guy. I'm like, No, when you get the opportunity, even if you're replacing someone at a program that has a lot of history that has a great coach, you're either ready or you're not clearly you have a lot of history. But but how about what you learn from, you know, replacing long Krueger and then how you can maybe sympathize? I don't know if that's the right word with what john Shire has been going through, you know, you know, the hard part of our relationship line is you're not going to be a better human being than line Krueger.

That's the shoes of how good of a person and human being he is. And then he's a Hall of Fame coach. But you know, the times were changing like right when, like when he retired. That's really eight weeks after I took the job, the chance of portal became a thing. Yeah, and I all became a thing different world. Oh, and hey, by the way, you're going to the SEC in four years, and everybody gets an extra year COVID.

The all four of those things happen eight weeks. And I had two players when I got the job. So that's the reality of what's hard on the hard on taking over jobs is, you know, this time of year, you might have to, you know, back in the old days, you come to the Final Four, you might have two or three, two or three guys sign late tops, come to the Final Four, see some old colleagues have a couple pops at lunch. I'm going from here to resume.

I'm not gonna lie. I'm surprised you're even here today. Because I remember last year, you're like, we're in the same convention center, but I'm on a zoom just transfer portal. I'm literally going from here to my hotel room.

I have assumed 20 minutes. Gotcha. And but this is it's our new world. And john, you know, he amazing having, you know, being able to do that a dupe with his team. And he's such an ambassador because he won a national championship.

Yeah, people have the opportunity when national championship is a player and a coach especially. What do you think decides Florida and Auburn obviously seen both of them this year and going up against them? You know, the thing that I've been asked is a lot their their positional size is daunting.

They're 611 61069. But they they both defensively put so much pressure on you. But they also have elite, hard shot makers. Yeah, like Clayton, we started we played Florida, he's unbelievable. The first five possessions, we got stops.

And I'm sitting there feeling pretty good about myself going on. And he comes off a ball screen right the left taking time bomb, and just hit like a 28 foot dagger, then he comes down off the dribble hits back to back daggers. And we're just like, he just did it again. I mean, they're shot making ability, those two teams, they're both elite positional size. And that's an athleticism if Auburn's going to win. To me, it's the defense of Denver Jones, and then to hide Pettiford's gonna have to clear 20 points that that's what I look at the first two things, you know, both those guys, they just have so many different guys, both teams. And I'll say this, I told, I told Todd this golden after we played kind of was out the game we played and pause.

Yeah, yeah. So he played and he had the game before him. He had like 10 and 10 and then argue. So I told Todd, I said in our final four run at Loyola, I said Ben Richardson got hurt in like, end of early December. And then he came back in February and Lucas Williamson was a freshman that I ended up having to play. And then when Ben came back, Ben started again, but Lucas was my sixth man and was unbelievable in our final four run. I said, Todd, the fact that kind of doubt me, this kid is emerging, he's going to help you in March.

And I'm telling you, and not that I'm trying to be a prophet, but what the hell I'll say, it won't be like, no one else is saying it. So but but sure enough, did you see how much that kid has been huge? Because they get experienced during the season, and then you're deeper. Besides Clayton, he was their best player on the court. Oh, man.

In their last game. All right. I know you got to run American Cancer Society coaches versus cancer, obviously a great cause, you know, tell us more about what you're doing. You know, just for years, coaches versus cancer, the American Cancer Society been partners, everybody's been affected as I lost both my parents. And the thing is that the society human beings, we've overcome things through every decade, we are going to be cancer.

And the technology now to get early detection saves lives, you can get in their friends, family, early detection can save lives. And it's just we've got to outright have our outreach, keep pushing, keep fighting, we will be cancer with the push and American Cancer Society coaches versus cancer are all pushing and we plead for everyone to jump on board. Well, coach, always great to see and appreciate your support in such a great cause by the way in or out on the bears this year. Oh, I'm so in.

Five feet, five feet in. I drink the Kool Aid, drink the Kool Aid, you're preparing for the heartbreak. It's a Saturday live special. I'm starting. Oh, I was I was that guy on opening the openings this kickoff. That was at everything. I had my Peyton jersey on chili and everything in that first game just punched me in the gut. I almost just strangled myself or my headphones just flying out of my ears. But coach, great to see you. Thanks. Zach, take care, my friend.