By This section of our website is dedicated to keeping up-to-date with the Oklahoma state men’s basketball roster. We have a ton of photos and stats to go over.
If you’re not sure what to look for in a team, then these are two things to keep an eye out for: the number of players on the roster, and the coaches that put those players on the roster.
Oklahomans have a reputation for being pretty good at basketball. They are consistently ranked 2nd only to Texas, and they are a state that is expected to be in the NCAA tournament for the next decade. That’s great, but the best teams in the state are usually the best teams in the state. This is true for basketball as well, as we have an excellent team in the state that is ranked 2nd in the nation.
Last season, the Sooners were ranked 14th in the nation in total offense and second in the state in scoring with a total of 103.9 points per game. They also led the state in assists, steals, and turnover percentage (42.0%), and were second in the nation with a 46.1% shooting percentage from three-point range.
A lot of the success of a team is dependent on the coaching staff. However, the coaching staffs in Oklahoma are a little bit different from those in other states. In Oklahoma, the staff are the same as those in other states; head coach Scott Drew is a former high school coach who has been taking over the head coaching position at Oklahoma since he took over the Sooners in 2010.
Drew, like most of the Oklahoma coaching staff, doesn’t shy away from taking a shot at winning, and he is clearly willing to give some of his players a chance to shine. The players on his roster include four starters from last season’s 15-win team (including one of the team’s leading scorers), and three others who made significant contributions to the 15-win team. One of the three players on the 15-win team who made significant contributions was sophomore forward Andrew Wiggins.
The Oklahoman’s Matt Moore recently posted this on his blog, “Oklahoma State’s 2010 team is a top-10 recruiting class that includes four starters from last year’s Big 12 title team. That’s about as good a recruiting class as we’ll see this year. And it’s a class that has a chance to be an even better one next year.” This is not just an over-the-top recruiting hype piece, but a realistic assessment of the talent at Oklahoma State.
While I like how the Oklahomans have already begun to land top-10 recruiting classes in recent years, that talent level is not as high as some people would have you believe. We’re talking about top-100 players, not top-10. Oklahoma State has two players in the top-100, which is a lot, but it is not a huge number. That’s not to say its not a recruiting class worth watching.
The top-100 is an annual list of the best 100 high school basketball players in the United States. The list is compiled using a top-100 ranking system. Oklahoma State is ranked No. 1 for the 2014-2015 basketball season. In that class, five of the top-10 players come from the Cowboys, and that means they are the class of the year. The class of 2015 is led by four-star freshman guard Jaren Jackson Jr.
The Cowboys’ class of 2015 was one of the most talented and diverse in recent memory. This is due to the fact that OU is a traditional power in college basketball and the class has a lot of guys from the state of Oklahoma, including senior forward K.J. Hammons, three-star power forward Isaiah Hicks, three-star freshman center Xavier Williams, one-star freshman swing forward Josh Davis, two-star freshman wing Michael Smith, and two-star junior guard Austin Nichols.
