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Welcome to the SEC: Oklahoma Women's Basketball in Strong Position Headed Into a New Conference

After the Sooners' winning ways tailed off at the end of Sherri Coale's career, Jennie Baranczyk has her team set for success as OU enters the SEC.

Randall Sweet

Oklahoma head women's basketball coach Jennie Baranczyk
Oklahoma head women's basketball coach Jennie Baranczyk / SARAH PHIPPS/THE OKLAHOMAN / USA TODAY
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After an illustrious career at Oklahoma that included nine Sweet 16 appearances, legendary head coach Sherri Coale stepped away from her former post after the 2020-21 season.

While Coale had plenty of success throughout her career at OU, her time in Norman didn't end as she may have hoped. The Sooners went 32-52 in Coale's final three seasons at the helm, resulting in a coaching change that brought former Drake head coach Jennie Baranczyk to Oklahoma.

Immediately upon her arrival, Barnaczyk was able to return OU to it's winning ways, going 25-9 and making the NCAA Tournament in her first year as the Sooners' head coach. In her second season at Oklahoma, Baranczyk's team went 26-7 and earned a share of the Big 12 regular season championship, once again making the NCAA Tournament.

While it was tumultuous at times, Baranczyk's coaching performance in 2023-24 may be her best yet. After a lackluster start to the year that saw the Sooners lose to Princeton, Tennessee, UNLV, North Carolina and Southern in a six game stretch, OU completely changed the course of its season when conference play began.

Oklahoma won 12 of its first 13 Big 12 matchups and went 15-3 overall in Big 12 play to win the regular season conference title for the second year in a row. After losing in the semifinals of the Big 12 Tournament, Baranczyk's team earned the No. 5 seed in the NCAA Tournament, taking down Middle Tennessee State before falling to Indiana in the Round of 32.

Despite losing in the second round of the NCAA Tournament for the third consecutive season, the Sooners bring back almost all of their roster from last season.

Skylar Vann, fresh off of an impressive redshirt junior season that earned the Edmond native Big 12 Co-Player of the Year and All-American honors, returns for her final season in Norman. Alongside Vann, fellow All-American Payton Verhulst is also set to return for her second year at OU.

After averaging 12.6 points, 5.8 rebounds, 3.9 assists, 1.2 steals and one block per game in 2023-24, Verhulst was a First Team All-Big 12 selection and earned Big 12 Newcomer of the Year honors following her transfer from Louisville.

In addition to Oklahoma's two returning stars, Baranczyk and company added one of the best players in the transfer portal over the offseason. After two years at Oregon State, All-American forward Raegan Beers decided to leave Corvallis, choosing the Sooners over the Connecticut Huskies and legendary coach Geno Auriemma.

As a sophomore with the Beavers, Beers averaged 17.5 points, 10.3 rebounds, 1.6 assists, 1.3 blocks and 1.2 steals per game while shooting 66.4% from the field, earning Third-Team Associate Press All-American honors for her efforts.

With the addition of Beers, OU now has three All-Americans in its starting lineup heading into the 2024-25 season. While the Sooners have plenty of starpower, the team also returns multiple key role players from last year's squad.

Sharpshooter and former Oklahoma State transfer Lexy Keys, All-Big 12 honorable mention Sahara Williams, starting point guard Nevaeh Tot and a number of other important bench pieces are all set to return for Baranczyk as Oklahoma transitions into the SEC.

The team also adds two true freshman to its roster in Bethany (OK) product Zya Vann and former Putnam City West (OK) standout Caya Smith.

While OU should have plenty of talent on the roster next season, they will also take a step up in competition as they enter their new conference. An SEC team has won the NCAA Tournament the past three seasons.

With Dawn Staley at South Carolina and Kim Mulkey at LSU in addition to Texas still having a solid program, the Sooners regular season schedule could be a gauntlet of quality opponents.

Still, Baranczyk has built a good roster and put her team in a good position to take the next step and advance past the Round of 32 for the first time since taking over in Norman.

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Randall Sweet
RANDALL SWEET

Randall is a recruiting analyst and staff writer at AllSooners focusing primarily on OU Football and the recruiting trail. Working as a journalist, Randall has covered the Oklahoma Sooners, the Oklahoma City Thunder, and high school sports across the state. A 2022 University of Oklahoma graduate, Randall hails from Lubbock, TX. While in college, Sweet wrote for the OU Daily in addition to working with Sooner Sports Pad and OU Nightly. Following his time at OU, Sweet served as the Communications Coordinator at Visit Oklahoma City before leaving to join the team at AllSooners. The West Texas native has bylines in the Norman Transcript and is a Staff Writer for Inside the Thunder. Randall holds a bachelor’s degree in Journalism from the University of Oklahoma in Norman, OK. 

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