Despite ending in a loss, this season was still a win for Tulsa Basketball fans.
It might have been an ending we will all try to forget, but the 2025-2026 University of Tulsa Men’s basketball season was far from forgettable. On the contrary, Tulsa fans should remember this season as one of the greatest in the history of the program. It is true that Tulsa has three Sweet Sixteen appearances in its history, and two NIT championships, but the last time any of those happened was in 2001 — a time in which the Golden Hurricane won the NIT in a season that was actually considered somewhat of a disappointment and coming off the heels of the program’s first and only run to the Elite Eight in 2000. Furthermore, it marked the end of the golden age of Hurricane basketball, which was incredibly successful in the second half of the 1990s. Now, a quarter century removed from the good old days, the landscape of college athletics has changed dramatically — and not in our favor.
In modern college basketball, at a school with the smallest student population in FBS football and one of the smallest of any mid to high major in Division I basketball, to compare our results with programs who spend an order of magnitude more on their teams than we do is simply foolishness. With great expectation comes great disappointment more often than not in college sports. Elite programs, like the Dukes, UConns, and Michigans of the world, judge their seasons by the end result. They can win 30 games during the regular season and still have fans classify their season as a failure if it does not end in a National Championship or at least a Final Four run. At Tulsa, we may not have had such luxuries for a while, but for this particular season, that just might be a blessing in disguise. It allowed us to enjoy the season in itself without the final-four-or-bust pressure that weighs down so many programs. The 2026 basketball season was not defined for us by a couple games in March but by the regular season, the ups and downs we experienced and all the memories we made during the last four months.
This season ought to be celebrated because together we got to witness a last second victory over crosstown rival Oral Roberts, Miles Barnstable’s poster dunk against Missouri State and a Senior Day win which came down to the wire just to name a few of the most electric moments of the season. It should be celebrated because we watched Eric Konkol’s squad blossom into one of the most prolific shooting teams in college basketball thanks to Barnstable, David Green and Ade Popoola, and, above all, we should celebrate because for only the second time in school history, the Tulsa Men’s Basketball team won thirty games. Only the 1999-2000 team — which made the Elite Eight — has done that in the past. Tulsa also went 19-2 in the Reynolds Center this season, topping the conference in home winning percentage and rewarding the fans who showed up night in and night out to watch what turned out to be one of the most exciting teams in the country, able to rain down a barrage of three pointers at any moment and score in bunches with an elite transition offense.
We also got to witness the emergence of a new rivalry between Tulsa and Wichita State, as the two teams met four times this season. Both won the matchups on their home court — before the Shockers broke our hearts by ending Tulsa’s March Madness aspirations in the American Conference tournament, a game which was impacted by the absence of David Green and his sixteen points and five rebounds per game. The Golden Hurricane got the last laugh, however, as a wild back and forth contest between the two teams in the Reynolds Center saw Tulsa jump out to a 30-6 lead, only to watch it melt away thanks to poor shooting and officiating. A huge bucket by a healthy Green and clutch foul shooting by Tylen Riley and Barnstable, however, iced the game, punching Tulsa’s ticket to the NIT Final Four in front of the most crowded student section that Tulsa has seen since the 2024 Oklahoma State football game. The rivalry reached a point where students who made physical copies of the NIT bracket on whiteboards omitted the Shocker logo entirely. Rivalry hate is one of the most important aspects that distinguishes college sports from the professionals, and the fact that we got to see it towards the end of this basketball season is a sign of just how engaged the school and Tulsa community was with this team. Emotions ran high, and there may not have been any win this season which topped the home victory over the Shockers a couple weeks ago.
Finally, consider the environment in which Coach Konkol and the Golden Hurricane were able to accomplish all this. Tulsa, as a private school, does not have to disclose its name, image, and likeness and revenue sharing expenses but is generally considered to be towards the lower end of the AAC in spending, in the same boat as schools which spend an estimated 1.5 to 2 million on total NIL and revenue sharing. For comparison, Auburn, Tulsa’s opponent in the NIT championship game, spent the ninth most money in the country on their roster, dishing out over 20.5 million dollars.
In a world of college athletics that has tried to leave schools like ours behind, the men’s basketball program and coaching staff staged a Moneyball level coup in both the American conference and in college basketball as a whole, finding a way to stretch their resources to compete with some of the richest programs in the country and players that fit with their system, with each other and with the TU community who made an impact this season that we will not soon forget, even those who, like fan favorite Miles Barnstable, had just one year to do so. For this Tulsa team to do what they did, winning 30 games, making a run to the NIT championship game and doing it all with a mostly new roster and comparatively little to work with financially, was the kind of miracle that only happens in the movies, except we just witnessed it live with our own eyes. Did it end the way we all wanted it to? Of course not, but nobody remembers who won the NIT championship the way they remember the legends of March Madness. No one walks into a school’s trophy room and is amazed by how many NIT trophies they have. You probably did not even know before reading this that Tulsa has won the NIT twice. Teams do not play in the NIT so that they can be remembered as NIT champions. They accept an NIT invite because it’s one last chance to “ball out,” one more opportunity to put on a show for the fans — something a true competitor could never pass up. And what a show this team put on.
If you need to see accomplishments stacking up to call this season a success for Tulsa basketball, look no further than the fact that we were in the NIT championship game at all; look at the fact that Tulsa’s 2 million dollar basketball team pulled off an epic comeback against a 20 million dollar team, one of the blue bloods of the sport, and won 30 games for only the second time ever. And we certainly hope that this season is a precursor of things to come — that more seasons like this one are around the corner. Even if Tulsa’s basketball continues to ascend, however, remember this team, the one that laid the foundation, because their greatest accomplishment was bringing all of us along for the ride — one that we will never forget.
