Oklahoma basketball: Porter Moser gains another 2022 recruit

It’s been a tough couple of weeks for head coach Porter Moser and the men’s Oklahoma basketball program.

Five Sooner players have entered the transfer portal in the past few weeks, including a couple of starters. That doesn’t include two players from this past season’s team who ended their college eligibility after one transfer season with the Sooners (Jordan Goldwire and Marvin Johnson).

Moser said he was caught off guard with the recent transfer decision by Mo Gibson. “He said he was coming back.” the OU head coach said in an interview session with reporters during the first stop on the Sooner Coaches Caravan in Tulsa. “We’d talked and he’d been working at a lot of things. Then, just this week, he came in and said he wanted to look at some different options.

“That’s the world we live in right now with the portal,” Moser said.

Gibson had announced a week or so ago that he was going to explore his NBA Draft status but that he was probably returning for one more season at OU.

Elijah Harkless, another OU starter, announced earlier that he was entering the transfer portal, and he ended up committing to UNLV.

Moser is also benefiting from the transfer process, having announced that two transfers will be joining the Sooner roster: Sam Godwin, a 6-foot, 9-inch forward from Wofford, and Joe Bamisile, a 6-foot, 4-inch guard who is coming from George Washington.

On Friday, Moser announced that Oklahoma has received a commitment from 6-foot, 9-inch power forward Luke Northweather, a three-star prospect out of Blair Oaks High School in Jefferson City, Missouri. Northweather becomes the fourth member of the Sooners’ 2022 recruiting class.

His senior high school season, Northweather averaged 29 points and 11 rebounds per game on his way to becoming the Missouri Gatorade Player of the Year. He joins four-star shooting guard Ortega Orweh, four-star point guard Milos Uzan and Benjamin Schroeder, a guard out of Germany, who has played for the U18 teams for Bayern Munich and the German national team, in Oklahoma’s 2022 class.

Moser explained to reporters on Thursday that life as we knew it in college basketball coaching circles is undergoing revolutionary changes.

"“Everything has completely changed,” he said. “You’re juggling the NIL (Name, Image, Likeness). You’re juggling the portal. And to be able to have guys immediately eligible.“And you need time to build your own culture to where they want to stay. And we’re going to do that,” the energetic Sooner head coach said."

“At the end of the day,” he continued, “I’m going to find people that want to wear this OU jersey proudly,” pointing to the interlocking OU logo on his shirt. “They want to be in this program.”

You get the distinct feeling he isn’t going to stop until he gets the right kind of recruits in the Sooner program and establishes the kind of culture that instills in his players the same passion for OU and the basketball program that he embraces.

All of that speaks well for the future of Oklahoma men’s basketball.