Oklahoma Basketball: Sooners Tip-off Season with Big 12’s Least Experience
By Chip Rouse
College football is at a fever pitch heading into the month of November, and that also means we are quickly sneaking up on the start of another season of Oklahoma basketball.
The coming season, which officially gets underway for OU in a home opener on Nov. 13 against Northwestern State, will represent a major change in personnel for coach Lon Kruger’s Sooners.
After going three consecutive years having the same four starters in the lineup for over 100 consecutive games together, the Sooners go from having the most experienced team in the Big 12 to one with the least amount of experience.
The biggest challenge will be “getting these young guys to grow quickly,” said Sooner head coach Lon Kruger last week at Big 12 Basketball Media Day. “It’s not great to be young in any league, but the Big 12 especially.”
Oklahoma returns only two starters from last season’s Final Four team that finished 29-8 and fourth in the final AP Top 25 rankings. The Sooners lose All-American Buddy Hield, Isaiah Cousins and Ryan Spangler. Hield, who lead the Big 12 in scoring, and Cousins played four seasons in Norman, and Spangler was a starter with them for three seasons after transferring from Gonzaga.
“It’ll be a new squad, a new identity,” Kruger said. “They guys returning have to be careful not to think that it’s just going to happen again or continue like it has been.”
Kruger, in his sixth season at Oklahoma, knows a thing or two about developing young talent and building a winning basketball program. He is one of only two college coaches who have taken five different teams to the NCAA Tournament and sometime this season will reach the 600-win level, which is rarified air in the college coaching business.
The 64-year-old head coach has taken the Sooners to the NCAA Tournament the last four seasons, after going 15-16 his first season in Norman in 2011-12.
Senior Jordan Woodard and junior Khadeem Lattin return from last year’s starting five.
Woodard returns to the point guard position, the role he had his freshman season at OU in 2013-14. With all the offensive firepower the Sooners had in their lineup a year ago, Lattin’s main contribution was on the defensive end, where he provided almost three blocked shots per game in Big 12 games.
Woodard was OU’s second leading scorer last season behind Hield. The six-foot senior guard averaged 13.0 points per game and was one of the better three-point shooters in the country, percentage wise, draining 45 percent of his three-ball attempts.
Expected to spell Woodard some at point guard is junior-college transfer Darrion Strong, who played at Coffeyville (Kan.) Community College the last two seasons.
Kruger is looking to Lattin to pick up more of the offensive load in 2016-17. The 6-foot, 9-inch forward from Houston averaged 5.6 points a game last season, but Kruger knows he is capable of doing much more.
“He’ll probably be the biggest surprise for the fans,” Kruger said in an interview for SoonerSports.com, “because he can really score and he wasn’t asked to do that last year (and) didn’t get as many opportunities to do that.
“He’s going to continue to crowd the lane and contest shots and block shots, but on the offensive end, we’ll expect him to do a lot more of what he can do.”
Sophomores Christian James, who showed some offensive spark late last season and in the postseason, and Dante Buford are good bets to join the starting five in 2016-17. James averaged nearly 5.0 points a game in the postseason, while Buford logged a team-high 12 minutes a game coming off the bench last season.
“We have something to prove to the Big 12 and to the nation.” –OU forward Khadeem Lattin, on the Sooners being picked sixth in Big 12 Preseason Poll
A couple of other young Sooners who are expected to see more action in the coming season are 6-foot, 10-inch center Jamuni McNeace and 6-foot, 6-inch guard Rashard Odomes, both sophomores.
Among the newcomers to the Sooner roster this season are forward/guard Kristian Doolittle, a local product from nearby Edmond, Okla., who played at the same high school as Woodard, and Kameron McGusty, a guard from Katy, Texas. Both were highly recruited prospects that Kruger is very high on.
Some close the Sooner men’s program believe that Doolittle is good enough to crack the starting lineup. “He’s a total package,” Kruger said in a recent interview with Ryan Aber of the Oklahoma City Oklahoman. “He’s got good size, good versatility, rebounds the ball well, shoots the ball well, (and is) good defensively. He’s really got a nice instinct for the game.”
Oklahoma has finished second or third in each of the past three seasons. This season, the Sooners were picked in the Big 12 Preseason Coaches Poll to finish sixth in the conference, which got the attention of the OU players, including forward Khadeem Lattin.
“I feel we can be higher,” he told SoonerSports.com. “I think it just adds fuel to the fire. We have something to prove to the Big 12 and to the nation.”