The Head Coach of Oklahoma Sooner Just Announced his Departure

OU Basketball: Big 12 Conference Awards Are Dominated by Oklahoma
In addition to coach Jennie Baranczyk and player Payton Verhulst, Skylar Vann was the fourth Sooner to win Big 12 Player of the Year.

Norman: The Big 12 announced on Tuesday that Oklahoma senior Skylar Vann was selected Co-Player of the Year.

Together with Madison Booker of Texas, Vann was named co-player of the year for leading the Sooners to consecutive regular-season titles.

Payton Verhulst, a former transfer from Louisville, was voted Newcomer of the Year, while head coach Jennie Baranczyk was selected Big 12 Coach of the Year.

On Tuesday, the 2024 All-Big 12 basketball teams were also unveiled, and four Sooners were selected for the roster. Senior Neveeh Tot and freshman Sahara Williams were named honorable mentions, and Vann and Verhulst were selected for the first-team All-Big 12.

Vann joins Phylesha Whaley (2000), Stacey Dales (2001, 2002), and Courtney Paris (2007–09) as the fourth Sooner to earn Big 12 Player of the Year. Vann won back-to-back Big 12 Sixth Player Awards in 2022 and 2023.

The Edmond, Oklahoma, native was the only player in the league to average 15.0 points, 7.0 rebounds, 2.5 assists, and 1.0 steals per game during the regular season. Along with JuJu Watkins (USC) and Caitlin Clark (Iowa), she was one of three Power Five players to post the line nationwide.

Her selection to the unanimous first team was a first for her career; under Baranczyk, Oklahoma has now produced at least one player selected to the first team by consensus in each of the previous three seasons.

For the first time since taking over as head coach of Oklahoma, Baranczyk was chosen as the Big 12 Coach of the Year by her peers. After being ranked fifth in the league’s preseason poll, the third-year Sooner head coach masterminded one of the greatest comebacks in college basketball history, leading OU to a 15-3 league record (21-8 overall) and its second consecutive Big 12 regular-season championship.

Baranczyk guided the Sooners to a championship by leading them to five top-25 victories and the third-best winning percentage in the nation against NET top-25 teams, despite losing four starters from the championship squad the year before. Baranczyk has won the league’s coach of the year title three times in the last twelve seasons. He won the award twice while he was a Drake student. Coach Sherri Coale, who is inducted into the Hall of Fame, earned the league coach of the year award four times; Baranczyk is the second Oklahoma coach to do so.

Verhulst, who moved from Louisville to Oklahoma, won the league’s Newcomer of the Year award. For the Sooners, the junior averaged 12.7 points, 5.9 rebounds, 4.0 assists, and 1.1 steals per game. In conference play, he recorded four double-doubles.

During one of the most productive seasons in program history, Verhulst, a native of De Soto, Kansas, averaged 12.0 points, 5.9 rebounds, and 4.0 assists in less than 30 minutes a game, making him the only player in the nation to do it. Verhulst was one of OU’s two selections (together with Vann) to the Big 12’s 10-person First Team, in addition to winning Newcomer of the Year.

Tot led the Sooners with an average of 6.9 points, 4.5 assists, and 3.4 rebounds per game this season. He was Oklahoma’s lone returning starter. In league play, she had the best assist-to-turnover ratio in the conference (3.2), with Verhulst coming in second at 2.2.

With an average of 5.2 assists and only 1.7 turnovers per game in conference play, Tot became the fourth Sooner to record four straight seasons with 100 assists. She became the first Sooner to record 10 assists and zero turnovers against a top-10 team with her 14-point, 10-assist effort against then-No. 10 Texas.

Williams is the first OU freshman to be named to the All-Big 12 since Ana Llanusa was named to the honorable mention list in 2018. Williams averaged 9.7 points, 5.3 rebounds, and 1.4 assists per game. Her three double-doubles were third among freshmen in program history, behind only Paris (33) and Madi Williams (7), who were both selected unanimously to the first team in their latter years of play.

Eight conference games saw the Waterloo, Iowa, native score in double figures. On February 24, he recorded a career-high 20 points to aid in a 35-point victory over Oklahoma State. She recorded double-doubles against UNLV, Virginia, and Ole Miss, who were ranked 12 at the time.

Big 12 Honorable Mention Overall

Dre’Una Edwards, Aijha Blackwell, Darianna Littlepage-Buggs, Kailey Woolston, Jillian Hayes, Addy Brown, Ivy State, Zakiyah Franklin, Holly Kersgieter, Gabby Gregory, Nevaeh Tot, Sahara Williams, Anna Gret Asi, Sedona Prince, TCU, Shaylee Gonzales, Shay Holle, Taylor Jones, Bailey Maupin, Jasmine Shavers, Texas Tech, and