Oklahoma basketball: Sooners have as many newcomers as those leaving program

Get ready for a nearly complete makeover of men’s Oklahoma basketball for the 2021-22 season.

Players are always coming and going in college sports, and basketball is no exception to that reality.

Players leave the program because their four years of eligibility runs out or they decide to leave early and declare for the NBA Draft. Meanwhile the roster is replenished every year with incoming recruits, which serves as the lifeblood of the program.

At no time in the history of college basketball, however, has player movement been more prevalent than this offseason.

The NCAA waiver granting student-athletes an extra year of eligibility because of the pandemic has led to an unusually large exodus of players seeking greener pastures in other programs. This, coupled with a one-year NCAA exemption allowing players to transfer with immediate eligibility, has created a widespread free-agent market in college basketball.

No where has this movement been more apparent than in the Oklahoma basketball program.

In the days immediately after Lon Kruger announced his retirement after 10 seasons as the Sooners’ head coach, it appeared the roster of returning players for 2021-22 was down to four or five and just three scholarship players. And there was also some uncertainty about the commitments of two incoming recruits who had been signed by Kruger.

When former Loyola of Chicago head coach Porter Moser was hired in early April as the 14th head coach in OU basketball history, he knew there was a lot of work ahead of him in assembling a coaching staff and replenishing a depleted roster.

To date, as many as nine members of the Sooners’ 16-man roster this past season already have or are expected to depart the program, including OU’s second- and third-leading scorers from the 2020-21 campaign.

Austin Reaves, the Sooners’ leading scorer, has declared for the NBA Draft. Meanwhile, two other team leaders, Brady Manek and De’Vion Harmon, entered the transfer portal and will play next season at North Carolina and Oregon, respectively.

Although the transfer portal has taken it’s toll on the Oklahoma basketball roster Moser and his new coaching staff inherited, it also has been the principal tool that has allowed the new Sooner head coach to replenish his roster.

It’s both ends,” Moser told the Norman Transcript recently. “A lot of teams are getting hurt because so many guys are transferring, but (it) also gives the opportunity as a new coach to bring in some guys.”

The transfer portal taketh away, but also giveth

Moser wasted no time in dipping into the transfer pipeline to bring in several key additions, including the brother tandem of Tanner and Jacob Groves from Eastern Washington. Tanner, the Big Sky Player of the Year this past season, is best known for the 35 points he scored in Eastern Washington’s upset bid against Kansas in the opening round of this year’s NCAA Basketball Tournament Brother Jacob added 25 points in that same game.

About Tanner, Moser told the Norman Transcript, “he’s going to bring some size and some skill, which we really needed.”

Also joining the Sooners for 2021-22 is all-ACC Duke defender Jordan Goldwire, who, Moser said, “played at the highest level at Duke and brings a veteran mentality to us.”

The Sooners also have added Ethan Chargois, who started 86 of 108 games in four seasons at SMU. The 6-foot, 9-inch forward averaged 8.8 points and 5.4 rebounds this past season.

This past week, Oklahoma signed 6-foot, 10-inch Akol Mawein, who was rated as the top power forward coming out of the JUCO ranks this recruiting cycle.

The Sooners have greatly added to their interior presence next season with the additions of Tanner Groves, Chargois and Mawein. They also have returning reserve Rick Issanza, who stands 7-foot, 1-inch, but hasn’t had much playing time in his one college season.

Five new transfers, plus three incoming recruits, join four Sooner returners

In addition to Issanza, Moser feels especially good about his three other returning players. Senior Umoja Gibson brings exceptional shooting skill and a strong work ethic, and senior backcourt teammate Elijah Harkless brings toughness and a high competitive nature. Moser plans an expanded role for 6-foot, 7-inch junior forward Jalen Hill, who averaged nearly five points and three rebounds in 2020-21 in about 16 minutes per game.

Moser knows all too well that basketball will never be the big dog on the OU campus. By the same token, however, he expects that the Sooners’ basketball recruiting will get a giant boost based on the national reputation of Oklahoma football alone.

You can’t discount that as a contributing factor in Moser’s ability to counter the nine departures with eight new additions, all within a month’s time of signing on as the new Sooner head coach.

Moser was successful in convincing the two Kruger recruits in the 2021 class — four-star shooting guard C.J. Noland and three-star point guard Bijan Cortes — to uphold their commitments, and he added one of his own in signing Alston Mason, a point guard out of Blue Valley Northwest High School in the Kansas City area.

“I hope to build a culture to where we don’t have this many guys leaving,” Moser told reporters recently. You don’t want a recruiting class of nine or 10 guys, he said. You want to build an identity with your fan base, where they can identify with your players and get to know them.

That is something that is especially difficult with today’s transient rosters. Moser and his new coaching staff have done what they needed to do to stabilize a program that was leaking too much oil. Don’t be surprised if the new-look Sooners of 2021-22 edition of Oklahoma basketball delivers a result that is greater than the sum of the parts.

That is the reputation that has preceded Moser in his journey to Norman.