Only way is up for Oklahoma men, who tip off 2024-25 season on Monday

Oklahoma men's basketball tips off its inaugural season as a member of the SEC on Monday, playing host to Lindenwood University at the Lloyd Noble Center.

The Sooners welcome 11 newcomers to the roster, something that unfortunately has become an annual occurrence in the four seasons that Porter Moser has headed the OU men's program. Roster stability has been an ongoing issue since Lon Kruger retired as the Oklahoma head coach following the 2020-21 season. That was also the last time the Sooners made an NCAA Tournament appearance, losing 87-71 to No. 1 overall seed Gonzaga in the second round.

Expectations for this season's edition of Oklahoma men's basketball aren't particularly glowing. The Sooners are picked to finish 15th out of the 16 SEC teams in the coming season. Vanderbilt is the only team separating Oklahoma and the bottom of the league, according to the vote of media representatives who cover the SEC. The primary reason for that is the uncertainty created by roster instability and the need to integrate so many newcomers into the program.

The OU men return just two starters from last year's team that finished with a 20-12 overall record and an 8-10 mark and ninth-place tie in its final season as a member of the Big 12. The Sooners were the first team left out of the 68-team NCAA Tournament field and opted not to play in the National Invitation Tournament.

Returning for another year are senior forward Jalon Moore, who averaged 11.2 points and grabbed 6.7 rebounds per game last season, and 6-foot, 10-inch center/forward Sam Godwin, who averaged 6.7 points, 5.2 rebounds and 0.5 blocked shots in 31 games a year ago.

Despite all the newcomers, Moser believes this could be one of his better OU teams because of its shooting ability and depth.

I think we'll be able to shoot better," Moser told reporters last week. "We got to hang our hat on creating offense with our defense."

I don't know what my eight-man rotation is going to be yet, the OU head coach said, "but I think we're going to go deeper into the bench with experience because we've got some older guys coming off the bench."

One area that should be better for the Sooners in their SEC debut is perimeter shooting. Among the transfers Moser brought in is senior guard Brycen Goodine, a transfer Fairfield (Connecticut) who averaged 12.3 points last season and shot 47 percent from beyond the arc. Jadon Jones played last season at Long Beach State, where he scored 12 points a game and shot 38 percent from three-point range, and Dayton transfer Kobe Elvis drained 37 percent of his three balls last season.

All Big South guard and conference Newcomer of the Year Duke Miles averaged 17.0 points a gams in leading High Point to the conference title a year ago. He shot 60 percent on two-point field goals and also went to the free-throw line a lot, attempting 141 from the charity stripe.

Oklahoma also went to the portal to beef up its front court presence, adding 6-foot, 10-inch Alabama transfer Mohamed Wague, who will join returnees 5-foot, 11-inch Luke Northweather and Godwin. Wague shot 68 percent from the field last season, mostly dunks and close-in shots

OU 2024 recruiting class includes a pair of four-star, top-100 recruits in Jeremiah Fears, a 6-foot, 4-inch combo guard who decommitted from Illinois and reclassified from 2025 to 2024, and 6-foot, 2-inch combo guard Dayton Forsythe, who led his high school team in McCloud, Oklahoma, to three consecutive state titles.

An area that definitely needs to be better this season if Oklahoma is to defy the outlook of the experts and prove the naysayers wrong is ball security. The Sooners committed a turnover in 18 percent of their possessions last season, nearly 13 per game. That ranked them 250th out of 351 Division 1 teams in that category.

The Sooners did not play an exhibition game ahead of the season opener, but did hold an intersquad scrimmage earlier this week, where Moser got to see all of the new players in game-like action.

Jalon Moore scored 17 points in the scrimmage to lead all scorers, but Miles led all of the newcomers with 16 points along with three assists. Two other transfer newcomers, Goodine and former St. John's forward Glenn Taylor, added 13 points each. Taylor also pulled down seven rebounds in the scrimmage.

Also among the Sooner newcomers, Elvis scored 10 points and dished out four assists, and freshman point guard Fears scored nine points, including a pair of three-pointers.

It all gets underway for real on Monday with the Sooners hosting Lindenwood University out of the Ohio Valley Conference. OU is then off for a week before facing Northwestern State (Louisiana), a member of the Southland Conference, at Lloyd Noble Center on the following Monday.