Oklahoma basketball: Sooners sign pair of 2021 guards
By Chip Rouse
While the Sooners continue to add to a stellar 2021 football recruiting class, the Oklahoma basketball program has been busy as well.
On Wednesday, men’s basketball coach Lon Kruger announced the signing of a pair of four-star guards to National Letters of Intent for 2021-22.
Bijan Cortes is a 6-foot, 3-inch guard from Kingfisher, Oklahoma, located just outside of Oklahoma City. As a junior at Kingfisher High School, Cortes averaged 21.9 points, 5.8 assists, 5.6 rebounds and 2.6 steals. He shot 58 percent from the field and 51 percent from three-point range. He also shot 82 percent from the free-throw line.
He was a First-Team 4A All-State selection as well as player of the year in the Western Athletic Conference, Oklahoma Basketball Coaches Association Region I and Northwest Oklahoma.
Kingfisher High won back-to-back state titles in 2018 and 2019 with Cortes in the starting lineup, and he also led his AAU squad, Team Griffin, to the prized 2019 Peach Jam championship.
C.J. Noland, a 6-foot, 4-inch wing player from Waxahachie, Texas, verbally committed to the Sooners in September this year. He averaged 20.0 points as a high school junior last season, along with 7.3 rebounds, 2.7 assists and 2.0 steals per game. He shot 54.2 percent from the floor last season.
Noland received First-Team All-District honors in both his sophomore and junior seasons at Waxahachie High School.
The Dallas Morning News named Noland one of the top-five 2021 basketball recruits from the Dallas-Ft. Worth metroplex.
Rivals ranks the 2021 Oklahoma recruiting class 60th in the country and sixth best in the Big 12.
The Sooners will open the 2020-21 season on Nov. 25 at home against the University of Texas-San Antonio.