OU Basketball: Oklahoma Embracing Expectations Ahead of First SEC Season

Jennie Baranczyk's Sooners are ranked in the top 10 to start the year, but the OU coach has no worries about her team handling outside pressure this year.

Oklahoma Sooners guard Payton Verhulst high fives forward Skylar Vann at the Big 12 Tournament. / Amy Kontras-Imagn Images

NORMAN — Expectations are sky-high for Oklahoma despite the added rigors of stepping into the SEC. 

Jennie Baranczyk’s team returns virtually every piece from last year’s Big 12 Regular Season Champions, and OU made a massive splash in the transfer portal.

The Sooners won the battle for All-American center Raegan Beers, who will add immediate size in Norman after dominating the last two years at Oregon State.

All those moves have Oklahoma ranked in the preseason top 10 for the first time since 2010. 

But Baranczyk believes the excitement surrounding her 10th-ranked team won’t weigh the group down.

“I’d rather be a target than sit there and tell them that they’re the underdog,” Baranczyk said last week. “We’re Oklahoma. We don’t get to be an underdog.”

The Sooners dealt with pressure all of last year, fighting Texas wire-to-wire in the Big 12 race. 

Big 12 Co-Player of the Year Skylar Vann returns alongside star guard Payton Verhulst, and the Sooners will get back a key piece in Liz Scott, who missed all of last year with an injury. 

It’s an incredibly strong core, and one that is unburdened by the outside noise heading into the season in large part because of the tone Baranczyk sets within the locker room every day. 

“I think it just roots from Jennie,” Verhulst said. “She’s really good at acknowledging that stuff because I think you have to be turning a blind eye to say that 20-year olds and younger or older are not going to be on social media seeing stuff like the rankings. 

“.. At the end of the day Jennie does a good job of kind of grounding us back to earth and saying that at the end of the day it’s about basketball and we have to be able to take care of business.”

Stepping up a level into the SEC is still made easier by Beers’ arrival. 

She averaged 17.5 points and 10.3 rebounds a year ago at Oregon State. Her inside presence will be essential as Oklahoma battles South Carolina and LSU, and Baranczyk believes Beers has done an excellent job of integrating herself into OU’s style of play. 

“What she brings is a great leadership,” Baranczyk said. “And it’s less about what she can necessarily do at the basket. We’re still trying to navigate everything that we can do with her. And I think the team has really gotten to see is that we’re not changing everything. We’re sort of in the same system, she just looks different in it.”

Raegan Beers transferred to Oklahoma from Oregon State this past offseason. / NATHAN J. FISH/THE OKLAHOMAN / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

Beers herself was unsure she could fit into the offensive initially, but as Baranczyk started to show her film on her recruiting trip, Beers realized she could thrive at Oklahoma. 

“She showed me film and was like, ‘What you’re doing, what you’re doing at Oregon State, look at this clip. We do the exact same thing here,’” Beers said. “… So it was super cool to have the girls be like, ‘you’ve got this.’ … Once you get it, you get it.”

Baranczyk’s new-look Oklahoma will debut on Monday when the No. 10 Sooners open the year against Southern at 5 p.m. at the Lloyd Noble Center. 

Southern upset OU 79-70 last year in December, but there’s no revenge on the mind for the Sooners. 

Monday is about opening the season on the right foot and finally getting to take on somebody else after the grind of scrimmaging all throughout October. 

“(October’s) the tough part of the preseason,” redshirt senior guard Lexy Keys said. “You’re grinding through some of the days and you’re tired of playing against each other and I think honestly that’s where kind of the grit and the toughness kind of shows through.”