Oklahoma basketball: Transfers have transformed Sooners’ season
By Chip Rouse
The Oklahoma basketball 2020 recruiting class was two players and ranked last in the Big 12.
That was of small concern, however, for Sooner head coach Lon Kruger. He had a strong nucleus returning in senior starters Austin Reaves and Brady Manek and sophomore guard De’Vion Harmon, once a four-star recruit rated the No. 9 point guard in the 2019 class by Rivals.
Those three core players accounted for half of Oklahoma’s offensive production a year ago.
The two players in the Sooners’ 2020 recruiting class — 6-foot, 1-inch guard Trey Phipps and 6-foot, 5-inch forward Joshua O’Garro — have seen very little action this season. That is in large part because Kruger supplemented his 2020 recruiting with the addition of two transfer players, Elijah Harkless and Umoja Gibson.
Kruger has had success at Oklahoma supplementing recruiting with the addition of transfers. They come in with one or two years of game experience at the college level, and because of that they are generally ready to make an immediate contribution. And Harkless, who played a couple of seasons for Cal State Northridge, and Gibson, who began his college career at North Texas, are two prime examples of the value added that transfers can provide.
Reaves, who leads the Sooners in scoring this season and ranks second in the Big 12 behind Cade Cunningham of Oklahoma State with a 17.6 average, came to Oklahoma as a transfer from Wichita State. Several years back, Ryan Spangler joined the Sooners after one season at Gonzaga.
Harkless became a starter 10 games into the season and has started 12 of the last 13 games. He was averaging 2.7 points per game when he earned his first start of the season. Now a fixture with the starting unit he is averaging 7.2 points, and his presence is even better felt on the defensive end, where he is averaging close to two steals per game.
Gibson has been OU’s biggest three-point threat all season. He leads the team in three-pointers made (54) and in three-point percentage (.439). His three-point shooting was personally responsible for Oklahoma’s 75-71 home win over then-No. 9 West Virginia. He drained 8 of 11 long-range daggers in that game and finished with a season-high 29 points.
Gibson spent a good deal of the season coming off the bench as the sixth man. He has started the last eight games and has averaged 13.3 points during that period and 10.5 per game for the season.
“I’m letting everything come to me,” Gibson told The Oklahoman recently. “Just picking my poison off of everybody else’s mistakes. If they leave me open, I’ll take it. If not, just making the right plays.”
There is little question that the success OU has achieved this season, climbing all the way to No. 7 in the national rankings a week ago is in no small part attributable to the contributions of its two 2020 transfers. And here’s more good news. They both have another year of eligibility remaining.