Big 12 Basketball: Preseason power rankings for 2022-23 season

Oklahoma enters Year 2 of the Porter Moser era. The football program has been drawing the headlines this offseason, but the basketball program bears monitoring too.

Despite losing plenty of talent from Lon Kruger’s final season, Moser nearly steered the Sooners to the NCAA Tournament in his first season in Norman. Oklahoma fell just short of making the Big Dance, instead settling for a relatively quick exit from the NIT.

Oklahoma doesn’t have the benefit of keeping a ton of big talent from a team that almost made the NCAA Tournament a year ago. Plenty of players departed, but Jordan Goldwire, Elijah Harkless, and the unheralded Umoja Gibson are the ones who were significant parts of the team’s rotation.

Moser nabbed some solid players on the transfer portal, chief among them former Nevada guard Grant Sherfield. He’s been a stud for the Wolf Pack, making First Team and Third Team All-Mountain West in each of the last two years, respectively. He could be the team’s top scorer instantly.

The Sooners are going to need more from Tanner Groves, though. He was fine last season, averaging 11.6 points and 5.8 rebounds per game. He also sported the best true shooting percentage in the conference. But in his last year at Eastern Washington, Groves showed the ability to be dominant.

Oklahoma has NCAA Tournament potential, but it’s all dependent on whether or not their best players can carry them there.