When Jeremiah Fears should be starting his college basketball career, he could instead be a rookie in the NBA.
Fears reclassified from the 2025 class to 2024 to join the Oklahoma men's basketball program early for this season, and even as a young freshman, he still leads the Sooners in scoring while averaging 18.1 points a game after the nonconference schedule.
At the start of the season, Fears was a highly touted recruit with a lot of potential at point guard but not a lot of hype outside of Norman. No early NBA mock drafts included Fears in the first round, but now, nearly every mock draft has Fears as a lottery pick.
NBA mock drafts from most outlets now have Fears going inside the top 15 of the 2025 NBA Draft. He would be the first Sooner to be a lottery pick since Trae Young in 2018. No OU player has even been drafted since Young was seven years ago.
The highest Fears has been projected to go is No. 4 overall to the Charlotte Hornets by Bleacher Report. That would even top Young, who went fifth overall to the Dallas Mavericks before getting traded to the Atlanta Hawks. The only Sooner to go higher than No. 4 since 2000 was Blake Griffin, who was the top pick in the 2009 NBA Draft.
NBA Draft Room predicts the best-case scenario for most of Sooner Nation. That outlet has Fears going No. 7 to the nearby Oklahoma City Thunder. The Thunder got that pick from the Philadelphia 76ers in a trade, but obviously where teams are picking will change with the NBA season just getting going.
Other top-15 selections include at No. 9 to the Chicago Bulls by NBA Draft on SI and at No. 11 to the Detroit Pistons by NBADraft.net. The lowest I've seen Fears projected to go is by On3, which has Fears at No. 16 to the Utah Jazz.
Fears is getting the same type of national regard as Trae Young and Buddy Hield.
Where Fears actually ends up starting his NBA career is rather unknown still in January. However, what these NBA mock drafts solidify is that there's a star playing basketball at Lloyd Noble Center this season. And before long, Fears could be playing in NBA arenas around the country while he's still a teenager.