Updated Look at Oklahoma State Hoops' Spring Signing Period
STILLWATER – We’re just a little over three weeks away from the spring signing period and Oklahoma State basketball has two spots to fill. With all in-person/on-campus recruiting shut down due to COVID-19, it’s going to be interesting to see how college basketball goes about the next few weeks.
A breakdown of the current scholarship situation looks like this: the NCAA allows 13 scholarship players per year. The Cowboys had 11 this past season, meaning they still had two remaining. The loss of four scholarship seniors, Cameron McGriff, Lindy Waters III, Thomas Dziagwa and Jonathan Laurent, means that OSU has six scholarships to give.
Mike Boynton and Co. signed three guys back in November, No. 1 Cade Cunningham, No. 94 Rondel Walker and No. 313 Montreal Pena. Fast forward a few months, and they received a commitment from another four-star, this time No. 57 Matthew-Alexander Moncrieffe. So, they have two scholarships remaining.
The two guys that Mike Boynton and Co. are targeting are guard Donovan Williams and forward JT Thor.
Williams is a four-star guard out of North Star in Lincoln, NE and is one of the best prospects remaining in the 2020 class. Landing him would be another massive get for Boynton and Co. as he averaged 29 points per game and would give the Pokes another pure scorer.
Williams told SI’s Director of Basketball Recruiting Jason Jordan last week, “Here’s the thing, if the schools that I had officials scheduled to tell me they’re OK with me taking my time and no one is gonna take my scholarship then I would probably take my time,” Williams said. “But I don’t know that they’d say that. That’s what we’ll talk about. I don’t want to make a decision without weighing everything out. It’s a big decision and I’m in a situation that no one has ever been in. I have to make the best decision based on my reality right now.”
Williams is current down to six schools: Oklahoma State, Kansas, Kansas State, Texas, Texas A&M and Villanova. According to the recruiting sites, Williams holds offers from Oklahoma State (Mar. 20), K-State (Mar. 27) and Texas (Apr. 10), and had visits scheduled to those three schools.
Williams also told SI that he has two choices to make right now, “The first one is to make a decision right now,” Williams said. “Or I could just push everything back at least a month.”
Should he choose to make a decision right away, he has a school that he could choose.
JT Thor
We received word late last week that four-star forward JT Thor had narrowed his list down to three final schools: Oklahoma State, Auburn and UCLA. Oklahoma State have been the favorites to land Thor since early fall last year when he took his official visit to Stillwater along with Cade Cunningham and Rondel Walker last September.
Thor then all but dropped off the map as his social media went silent and no one had any new updates. Thor was expected to sign during the November signing period, but that came and went with no word from Thor.
Fast forward a few months and the speculation was that Thor was considering reclassifying back down to the 2021 class, or possibly taking a prep year.
I’d still consider Oklahoma State to be the favorites to land Thor, as would the recruiting sites, but with him being from Georgia, Auburn’s a real threat geographically. He also took an unofficial visit to Auburn back on March 4, shortly before everything shut down due to COVID-19. So, there’s no doubt that Bruce Pearl and the Tigers are in a good position.
