Oklahoma
Big 12 notebook: Oklahoma State loses lot of starters in transfer portal; Title game staying put
ARLINGTON, Texas (AP) — Oklahoma State lost at least eight starters among the 18 players who went into the transfer portal since last season. The Cowboys also added 14 players from the portal.
“I attribute it to the times,” coach Mike Gundy said Wednesday at Big 12 football media days. “We can look across the country in the portal. We’ve got players that are playing on national championship teams that are leaving and going to other schools. We have players that are leaving after one year, players that are leaving after five years.”
Five of the Cowboys that left went to other Big 12 schools, including offensive tackle Caleb Etienne to league newcomer BYU and running back Domic Richardson to Baylor. Long-time starting quarterback Spencer Sanders went to Ole Miss.
Two Oklahoma men are facing criminal charges after scuffling that broke out when the two allegedly tried to control access to a State Board of Education meeting.
An Oklahoma judge has thrown out a lawsuit seeking reparations for the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, dashing an effort to obtain some measure of legal justice by survivors of the deadly racist rampage.
Brooks Koepka is accusing LIV Golf teammate Matthew Wolff of quitting on the course. Koepka is captain of Smash. Wolff is among his three teammates.
Talor Gooch is a winner for the third time this year in the LIV Golf League. The former Oklahoma State player made a 15-foot birdie putt on the final hole for a one-shot victory over Bryson DeChambeau in LIV Golf-Valderrama.
“For a while there I thought it was interesting, but I’m almost considering NIL and the portal like religion and politics where it’s not even worth discussing because we don’t necessarily have a rhyme or reason for what’s happening,” Gundy said.
LEAVING A CHAMPION?
Texas has been tabbed the preseason favorite to win the Big 12 in its final season before moving to the SEC.
“It won’t be awkward for us,” Longhorns coach Steve Sarkisian said of the pending move. “We’ve got a roster full of players who quite frankly came to the University of Texas to try to win a Big 12 championship, and we’ve got one more opportunity to do that, and I think our guys are focused on that.”
The Longhorns have won the Big 12 three times, including the inaugural 1996 title. They were also conference champs in 2005, when they were the last Big 12 national champions, and in 2009.
Kansas State, which beat national runner-up TCU in the Big 12 title game last December, was picked second, ahead of departing Oklahoma, Texas Tech, the Horned Frogs, Baylor and Oklahoma State. Texas got 41 of the 67 first-place votes in the media poll, while K-State got 14.
Each of the Big 12’s four newcomers — BYU, Cincinnati, Houston and UCF — were picked to finish in the bottom half of the standings.
STAYING PUT
The Big 12 championship game will remain at AT&T Stadium through at least 2030.
Commissioner Brett Yormark said the six-year extension announced Wednesday allows the league to host its title game “at a world-class venue in our own backyard.”
Yormark also said that for the first time this year, the game will include a halftime show featuring a major artist and the participating school bands that will be part of ABC’s television broadcast. The artist will be revealed around Aug. 12, when tickets go on sale for the Dec. 2 game.
The Big 12 hasn’t played its title game anywhere else since AT&T Stadium opened in 2009. After games in 2009 and 2010, the conference didn’t have a championship game the next six seasons before resuming it in 2017.
HOUSTON’S BIG 12 QB
Houston enters the Big 12 with a quarterback with a lot of experience in the league.
Texas Tech transfer Donovan Smith, a dual-threat QB, played in 21 games for the Red Raiders over the past three seasons.
“I felt like it was important to bring a guy in with experience, with Big 12 experience. We did that at a number of other positions,” Cougars coach Dana Holgorsen said. “Donovan has impressed me. I think his best days are ahead of him.”
That doesn’t necessarily mean Smith will be the successor to Clayton Tune, who threw for 11,994 yards and 104 touchdowns over 47 games for the Cougars the past five seasons. Houston also has returning backup Lucas Coley.
“They’ve been 50/50, and we knew they were going to be 50/50, and they’re going to continue to be 50/50 until one just makes it clear,” Holgorsen said.
IMPROVING KANSAS
Kansas has eight wins in its first two seasons under coach Lance Leipold. The Jayhawks won only nine games combined the six seasons before that.
They were 5-0 last year and had their first Top 25 ranking since 2009 before quarterback Jalon Daniels got hurt. They finished the regular season 6-6 and made their first bowl game since 2008, losing 55-53 in triple overtime to Arkansas in the Liberty Bowl.
Leipold said last year was a big step forward for the program and showed the resiliency of the team. He wants his players to embrace expectations while keeping their focus on now.
“I think this group gets it,” he said. “But at the same time, for a program like Kansas, we need to embrace some of those things, expectations and the positivity that’s surrounding our program.”
REMEMBERING HIS DAD
Baylor coach Dave Aranda’s father died this week from pancreatic cancer.
Aranda said he had a great relationship with his father, and knew his father loved him without him ever really openly saying it.
“I remember when he called me and told me that he had pancreatic cancer and it was Stage 4, I told him that I loved him and he didn’t say it back. I don’t know if he heard me,” Aranda said. “So I wanted to go and say it to him face to face. I was able to do that. He gave me a big hug. … He wouldn’t let me go, and he kept really strong and he told me that he loved me.”
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AP college football: https://apnews.com/hub/college-football and https://twitter.com/ap_top25
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Bye-bye Big 12, hello SEC. Texas and Oklahoma are finally making their long-awaited conference switch.
But first, it’s time to party with Bevo (the longhorn) and Pitbull (the human).
The three-years-in-the-making switch to the Southeastern Conference for two programs that were co-founders of the Big 12 in 1996 officially happens Monday.
And for their move to a league where “It Just Means More,” Texas and Oklahoma have scheduled big campus celebrations Sunday and Monday with carnivals, live music and fireworks. Oklahoma’s even stretches to events statewide.
The SEC Network planned live programming from both campuses over the two days, and Longhorns and Sooners fans had their first chance to buy SEC-branded school merchandise.
“This is a day we have been building toward for years,” Texas athletic director Chris Del Conte said.
It’s a moment college sports in general has been building toward in the era of major realignment. The Texas and Oklahoma break from the Big 12 helped trigger myriad conference shifts with more on the way. By the first kickoff of the 2024 season, 11 so-called Power 4 programs will be in new conferences.
The Big Ten will grow to 18 teams with USC, UCLA, Oregon and Washington poached from the Pac-12. The beleaguered West Coast league also lost Arizona, Colorado, Utah and Arizona State to the Big 12, and California and Stanford to the Atlantic Coast Conference. SMU leaps from the American Athletic Conference to the ACC on Monday as well.
As for Oklahoma and Texas, they originally planned to join the SEC in 2025, but ultimately reached a financial deal with the Big 12 for an early exit. And they leave with a whole lot of hardware.
Between them, the Sooners (14) and Longhorns (four) won 18 Big 12 football titles in 25 years, with Texas winning the crown last season for the first time since 2009.
In its final year in the league, Texas won 15 league regular season or tournament championships across all sports, and national titles in volleyball and rowing. Oklahoma capped its final season with its dominant softball program winning its fourth consecutive national title in May. The Sooners beat Texas in the final.
“Texas brings more tradition, more talent, more passion and more fight,” to the SEC, the school said on its athletics website.
All that winning will be much more difficult to duplicate in the SEC. Oklahoma opens its first SEC football schedule at home against Tennessee on Sept. 21. The Longhorns debut at Mississippi State on Sept. 28.
Since the start of the College Football Playoff in 2014, SEC schools have won the championship six times.
Texas (2005) and Oklahoma (2000) were the only two schools to win national titles in football while in the Big 12.
Some traditional rivalries will be stitched back together, and some torn apart.
The Texas-Texas A&M rivalry is reborn. It had been on hiatus since A&M left the Big 12 for the SEC in 2012. Oklahoma’s Bedlam rivalry with Oklahoma State is ruptured.
Texas spiced things up with Texas A&M last week when it poached Aggies baseball coach Jim Schlossnagle to Austin. At his introductory news conference, Schlossnagle warned Longhorns fans that the SEC is the “major leagues” of college baseball. The league has won the past five national championships.
Texas and Oklahoma planned for thousands of fans to join their celebrations.
Texas set up a central campus carnival. Fans will get autograph sessions with team coaches, and a chance to pose with the Bevo longhorn mascot for photos in the afternoon.
Sunday night includes a scheduled concert by “Mr. Worldwide” pop star Pitbull on a stage underneath the campus’ iconic clock tower.
Oklahoma’s celebration started Sunday night with a “Race to the SEC” 5k race through the heart of campus, with midnight sales of SEC merchandise and fireworks.
Monday morning, former Sooners coach Barry Switzer will co-host a celebration breakfast in Tulsa and Oklahoma will host a campus party at the football stadium with live music and entertainment.
“We couldn’t be more excited to join the SEC. Our teams are poised for success and look forward to the competition with many of America’s most outstanding universities,” Oklahoma athletic director Joe Castiglione said.
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AP college sports: https://apnews.com/hub/college-sports
Oklahoma State basketball coach Steve Lutz talks about reviving Cowboys’ program
Oklahoma State basketball coach Steve Lutz talks about reviving Cowboys’ program
OSU ATHLETICS
The first non-transfer portal addition for new Oklahoma State men’s basketball coach Steve Lutz came with in-state ties.
OSU added junior-college transfer C.J. Smith, a 6-foot-7, 195-pound swingman from Coffeyville (Kansas) Community College on Saturday.
Smith is originally from Oklahoma City and concluded his high school career at Putnam City North, where he led the Panthers to a 24-3 record averaging 17.2 points and 6.0 rebounds in 2022-23. He was a first-team selection on The Oklahoman’s Big All-City squad.
In his lone season at Coffeyville, Smith played 23.4 minutes per game, averaging 8.3 points and 4.6 rebounds.
He will be a sophomore next season, as he joins a veteran-heavy Cowboy roster thanks to the depth of veteran additions Lutz made through the transfer portal.
More: Oklahoma State basketball schedule: 2024-25 Big 12 opponents set for Cowboys, Cowgirls
Oklahoma City, OK – A new era of Thunder basketball was officially introduced Saturday. Nikola Topić, Dillon Jones, and Ajay Mitchell all met the media to discuss making it to the next level and being members of the Thunder.
Topić will miss the upcoming season with a knee injury. Many draft boards had him listed as a top four talent in the draft, but the knee injury did scare some teams off.
As for Jones, he said his time at Weber State as “the guy” prepared him for what he needs to do to help OKC win with their current talent.
Ajay Mitchell joins the fold as a second round choice and knows his role could be impromptu and less consistent than usual, but that’s something he says he’s prepared for.
Hear from all three Thunder rookies in the video above.
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