Sooner Sports Stat: Two Out of Six Equals One-Third From Land of the (Big) 12
By Chip Rouse
This week in the world of Sooner sports has been all about the NBA Draft. That was the only game in town now with all Oklahoma Sooner athletic competition now history for the 2015-16 academic year.
That’s not all that bad a deal, though, especially when you consider that six out of the ten Big 12 schools, and many others across the great landscape of college sports had no reason to even bother with college basketball’s annual rite of passage – the NBA Draft. That’s the time, nearly three months after the last college game of the season, when those talented enough to draw the attention of professional teams are rewarded with a ticket advancing them from the college game to a big pay day and life at the next level as an NBA draft selection.
In a Power Five conference that prided itself – right or wrong – as the crème de la crème of the college game this past season (and several before that), the Big 12 was a virtual no show among the 60 picks that made up this year’s NBA Draft.
Oklahoma and Iowa State both had two draft selections each, but conference champion Kansas and Baylor were the only other schools from the 10-team Big 12 who had players chosen in the draft.
With Mr. All-Everything Buddy Hield’s selection as the sixth overall pick in the draft coming within the first 30 minutes of the draft on Thursday night, and Isaiah Cousins making it in as No. 59 and the next-to-last name to come off the board in the 2016 NBA new-player draft, the two Sooner selections book-ended the Big 12 contribution.
Almost three and a half hours separated the selections of the former Sooners Hield and Cousins, roommates while at OU, but it was time well worth the wait, as any Sooner fan will tell you.
The two backcourt mates played for four seasons at Oklahoma and contributed close to 50 percent of the Sooners’ scoring this past season. For the past three seasons, they started every single game for the Crimson and Cream.
Hield is headed to New Orleans to play for the NBA Pelicans, who sorely need his three-point-shooting proficiency. He will also be much closer to home – the Bahamas – than he would have been had New Orleans passed on the two-time Oklahoma All-American and left him available to be drafted by the Denver Nuggets or the Sacramento Kings, who came up immediately after the Pelicans in the first-round draft order.
Cousins wasn’t as fortunate as his Sooner Buddy, in terms of being close to home. Cousins headed halfway across the country from Mt. Vernon, N.Y., to play college ball at Oklahoma, and now he is headed further west after his second-round selection by the Sacramento Kings. Which makes me wonder what things might have been like – or could have been – had Hield fallen to No. 8 in the draft and gone to Sacramento, which is where a number of NBA Draft analysts had him going in mock drafts.
So two former Sooner basketball stars had their tickets to the NBA punched on Thursday night, but could that number become three by the time NBA rosters are finalized this fall?
The Oklahoma City Oklahoman is reporting that Ryan Spangler, who along with Hield and Cousins and junior Jordan Woodard started 105 consecutive games together as Sooners, has been invited by the hometown Oklahoma City Thunder to participate in the NBA Summer League.
The 6-foot, 9-inch Spangler, an Oklahoma native, transferred to OU after playing his freshman season at Gonzaga. He averaged 10.2 points and 9.0 rebounds for the Sooners in his final college season. Spangler had workouts with several NBA teams, including the Thunder, prior to the draft.
Spangler still has a long road to hoe to make the NBA roster of the Thunder or any other team, but at least he will get a good look, which is more than a host of other NBA hopefuls transitioning from the college game can say at this stage.