Oklahoma basketball: Looking ahead to tip-off of 2022-23 Sooners’ season

Year two of the Porter Moser era of Oklahoma basketball tips off for real on Monday as the Sooners entertain the Sam Houston State Bearkats out of the Western Athletic Conference.

The game is scheduled for a 7 p.m. CT tip-off at Lloyd Noble Center in Norman.

The Sooners are coming off a 19-16 2021-22 campaign in Moser’s first season at the helm of OU men’s hoops and a 7-11 record in the Big 12, good for a seventh-place tie. Sam Houston tied for fourth place last season in the WAC with a 13-5 record and 19-14 overall.

Oklahoma is picked to finish seventh again this season in the Big 12 Preseason Basketball Poll conducted by the league coaches.

The Sooner men return two starters from last year’s squad — 6-foot, 10-inch Tanner Groves and 6-foot, 6-inch Jalen Hill — along with 44.1 percent of its offensive production and 52.9 percent of its rebounding.

Groves, a transfer last season from Eastern Washington, averaged 11.6 points and 5.8 rebounds per game, while Hill contributed 9.1 points a game and led the team with close to six rebounds per contest.

Tanner’s brother, Jacob Grove, came off the bench for much of last season but worked his way into the starting lineup starting the final nine games of the season a year ago. The Sooners are expecting a bigger contribution from Jacob this season. He averaged 4.6 points and 2.9 rebounds a year ago.

Oklahoma also returns a pair of sophomore guards, C.J. Noland and Bijan Cortes.

The 2022-23 Sooner roster includes eight newcomers (four transfers and four freshman recruits).

Grant Sherfield, a transfer from Nevada, and Joe Bamisile, who comes to the Sooners from George Washington, are expected to have an immediate impact in the OU offense. Sherfield, a 6-foot, 2-inch senior point guard, last month was named Big 12 Preseason Newcomer of the Year. He led Nevada with a 19.1 scoring average last season and ranked fourth in the country in assists (6.3 per game).

Sherfield had a team-high 14 points in Oklahoma’s 89-53 exhibition win over Oklahoma City University.

Basimile, a 6-foot, 4-inch junior guard, started 29 of 30 games for George Washington a year ago and averaged 16.3 points, fourth best in the Mountain West Conference, and 5.0 rebounds.

This will be the second season in a row that Moser has had to integrate at least eight newcomers into the Oklahoma roster.

Sam Houston lost a lot of its offensive production from a year ago when the Bearkats averaged 68.8 points a game. The leading returning scorers are 5-foot, 10-inch guard Jaden Ray, who averaged 8.3 points last season, and 6-foot, 6-inch forward Tristan Ikpe, who averaged. 6.7 points a game.

Like OU and seemingly every other school in college basketball, the Bearkats added several transfers, including 6-foot, 10-inch forward Kaosi Ezeagu from Kansas State. Ezeagu played in three games against the Sooners while at K-State. Last season, he averaged 4.2 points in a little over 14 minutes of action per game.

This will be the sixth game all-time between Oklahoma and Sam Houston. The Sooners have won all five of the previous games.