There’s a certain finality when the final teams in the bracket are released on Selection Sunday, and you don’t hear your name called.

Oklahoma faced that Sunday evening. The Sooners, 18-15 overall, were just shy of making the NCAA tournament. How close? OU was the No. 2 team left out. Agonizingly close.

Disappointed, sure. Confused? Definitely some of that, too. But the message first-year head coach Porter Moser tried to convey Sunday evening and now moving forward is it is still time to fight. It’s still time to show that resiliency that saw OU win four of its last five games, including vs. NCAA No. 1-seeded Baylor in the Big 12 tournament.

OU is a No. 1 seed in the 32-team National Invitational Tournament (NIT) and will host Missouri State in the first round 6 p.m. Tuesday on ESPN.

It’s not the goal OU was aiming for, obviously, but when you’re trying to build and establish a certain culture, every extra second time of practice and playing – well, it matters.

“You can be mad at people for not being selected, or you can prove them wrong,” Moser said. “I choose to prepare, to fight, to go into this tournament trying to prove people wrong. That’s how I’m choosing it and I want the players to follow my lead. We’re going to have this film session and practice, and they’re going to follow our coaching staff’s’ lead.”

OU gathered as a team to watch the show Sunday, hoping to get that bid. Hoping that playing one of the toughest schedules in the country in one of the toughest conferences in the country was going to be good enough.

Baylor and Kansas are both No. 1 seeds, and OU played that duo five times. All said and done, the Sooners played 10 games vs. teams seeded fourth or better, going 3-7 this season (Baylor, Texas Tech, Arkansas were the wins).

OU’s final NET ranking is No. 39, and it is the first team to not make it. Nos. 1-38 are in the field. Again, just a tough pill to swallow.

“It was tough. I wasn’t going to tell them not to grieve. It’s OK to grieve. These kids wanted it. You aren’t going to say don’t. I said take the time to grieve tonight. I understand that. For me, I’m gut-punched. But I’m more gut-punched for them.

“I feel like I’m a young coach, despite my age. I’m a young coach. I feel like I have many years left and opportunities. A player has a short window to be in the NCAA Tournament. First and foremost, my pain … their pain is worse. Those seniors, they will never have the opportunity again.”

But seniors and upperclassmen have an important job during the days and weeks ahead. The word du jour all season has been culture, culture, culture.

If you want to build that culture, responding to adversity in a positive way sets the example for the freshmen that those freshmen can then pass onto future recruiting classes.

“Being a leader on this team, you just have to show fight,” junior Jalen Hill said. “At the end of the day, we're just showing them what it's like when things don't possibly go your way. (The freshmen) look up to us seniors and juniors. They can learn a lot, and I think that moving forward they'll learn from this and help our teams in the future win big.”

Teams have used this as a springboard before. Jamie Dixon used an NIT championship to help create what he has done at TCU. Memphis won it last year and made the NCAA tournament this season.

It can happen. Getting over the initial frustration and winning that first game is going to be difficult. But if the Sooners can do that, Madison Square Garden and the NIT Final Four is absolutely a realistic expectation.

“We feel like the committee missed out on us. We want to prove to the world and prove to the nation that we belonged. We feel like if we win this whole tournament, if we go far in this and win it all, we can prove to the nation what we're capable of. That's pretty much it.”