Oklahoma basketball: De’Vion Harmon Big 12 Co-Player of Week
By Chip Rouse
De’Vion Harmon was a major reason Oklahoma basketball was able to record consecutive wins last week over three top-10 teams.
The Sooners’ sophomore point guard on Monday was named Big 12 Co-Player of the Week along with Davion Mitchell of Baylor. Mac McClung of Texas Tech is the Newcomer of the Week in the conference.
Harmon led the Sooners with an 18-point performance in the Oklahoma win over 9th-ranked Alabama on Saturday. That win was OU’s fourth over a top-10 team in the month of January, something that hasn’t been done in college basketball in almost five decades. The last time a college team defeated four team ranked in the nation’s top-10 was back in 1974-75.
In the three games prior to OU’s game Monday at Texas Tech, Harmon averaged 17.6 points a game, with a high of 22 points in the win over then-No. 9 Kansas.
On the same day that Harmon was honored by the Big 12 Oklahoma was awarded the No. 9 spot in the Associated Press rankings, advancing 15 places from 24th, where the Sooners were a week ago after entering the top 25 for the first time this season. The jump of 15 spots is the largest single-week poll advancement in the history of Sooner men’s basketball and the highest the team has been ranked since the early days of the Trae Young-led OU team in 2017-18.
This is Harmon’s first Big 12 weekly honor this season, and he is the third Oklahoma player to be so honored this season. Transfer guard Umoja Gibson swept the Player of the Week and Newcomer of the Week awards on Jan. 4 and Elijah Harkless, who transferred into the Sooner program from Cal State Northridge, was Newcomer of the Week last week.