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Oklahoma Women’s Basketball SEC opponents for 2024-2025 released

Oklahoma Sooners Women’s Basketball SEC opponents for the 2024-2025 season revealed.

The back-to-back Big 12 champions take their conference crown into a new challenge in the 2024-2025 season when they make their first run through the SEC. Jennie Baranczyk’s crew will face new foes, including a pair of the best women’s basketball teams in the country.

On Tuesday, the SEC revealed the conference opponent breakdown for the first year in the expanded conference.

The Sooners will welcome Alabama, Auburn, Georgia, Kentucky, Missouri, Texas, and Texas A&M. The Sooners will face Arkansas, Florida, LSU, Ole Miss, Mississippi State, Missouri, South Carolina, and Tennessee on the road.

Surprisingly, the Sooners will only face the Texas Longhorns one time next season, with the conference opting to play a home-and-home series between the Sooners and the Missouri Tigers.

Baranczyk and her staff have built a strong program over the last several seasons and earned a big-time commitment from [autotag]Raegan Beers[/autotag] this offseason. Beers provides a great frontcourt presence to a team that is returning a ton of talent from last year’s squad.

The SEC features some of the best basketball programs and coaches in the country like South Carolina, who went undefeated in 2023-2024 and won the national championship. LSU won the national championship the year before and lost to Iowa in the elite eight last season. Tennessee is one of the greatest programs of all time with eight national titles from 1987 to 2008.

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Jennie Baranczyk building the Oklahoma Sooners into a contender

Jennie Baranczyk is building the Oklahoma Sooners into a contender and the addition of Raegan Beers is the latest sign of the program’s upward trajectory.

[autotag]Jennie Baranczyk[/autotag] and the Oklahoma Sooners hit a home run in their recruitment ofOregon State transfer Raegan Beers. Beers, a third-team All-American, chose the Sooners over perennial powerhouse UConn, putting quite the feather in the cap of Baranczyk and her staff.

In Beers, the Sooners added one of the best players available in the transfer portal. She was really good in the NCAA tournament, helping Oregon State reach the Elite 8 before being ousted by eventual champion South Carolina. In the Beavers four games, she averaged 15 points and eight rebounds per game. In addition to her ability as a post scorer, she’s good defender that brings a physical element inside.

It’s an addition that will give the Sooners an opportunity to break through the round of 32 glass ceiling Oklahoma’s run into the last three seasons. They came close against Indiana, but couldn’t find a bucket late as the Hoosiers pulled away.

But with everyone that’s returning for 2024-2025 and the addition of Beers, the Sooners are now a Sweet 16 and Elite 8 contender in their own right.

The Sooners have had regular season success in a strong Big 12 conference. Baranczyk has led them to back-to-back Big 12 championships. But this staff hasn’t rested on that success. They know there’s more this program can accomplish. The addition of Beers, coupled with the talent they have coming back, gives the Sooners a boost that could propel them deep into the NCAA tournament.

The Oklahoma Sooners Women’s Basketball program is on the verge of breaking through to contender status. New challenges await as they venture into the SEC, but Jennie Baranczyk and her staff have been doing a great job with high school and transfer portal recruiting in addition to roster retention. She and her staff have created a culture that the players are buying into. There’s an energy in the program that has created an upward trajectory for the Sooners.

And beyond the culture, Baranczyk and her staff have proven to be really good basketball tacticians, helping the team create offense and get easy buckets. The addition of Beers adds a post element where the Sooners weren’t consistent enough in 2023-2024.

Beers proves the Sooners are capable of contending on the recruiting trail with the top teams in the nation. And with a reloaded roster, Baranczyk and the Sooners are off to prove they’re capable of contending with the best teams in the nation on the hardwood.

Everything’s there for the Sooners to be great in 2024-2025 and it’s time for the fan base to buy in as well.

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Oklahoma Sooners add All-American transfer Raegan Beers

“Deep down, I’m a Sooner.”

After leading Oregon State to the elite 8, All-American Raegan Beers announced her commitment to the Oklahoma Sooners.

The Oklahoma Sooners Women’s Basketball program continues to solidify itself at the national level during Jennie Baranczyk’s tenure at the helm. They’ve made three consecutive NCAA tournaments and advanced to the round of 32 each season.

This year, they were a few possessions away from advancing to the Sweet 16 before falling to Indiana in Bloomington. But Baranczyk and her staff haven’t settled on that success. They’ve continually looked to improve the roster and hit a home run on Monday adding All-American transfer Raegan Beers.

Beers, a forward from Colorado, played two seasons for Oregon State. She was the Pac-12 freshman of the year in 2022-2023 after averaging 13.3 points and 8.6 rebounds per game. She started six games that season before starting all 31 games for the Beavers in 2023-2024. Last year, Beers averaged  17.5 points and 10.8 rebounds per game, recording 16 double-doubles for an Oregon State team that went 27-8 and finished fourth in the Pac-12.

She was a two-time All-Pac-12 selection and earned third-team All-American honors from the Associated Press as a sophomore.

In Oregon State’s elite eight run, Beers averaged 15.75 points per game. In their loss to eventual national champion South Carolina, she scored 16 points had eight rebounds and three blocks, shooting 5-for-9 from the field and 6-for-9 from the free throw line.

Beers adds another inside presence to a Sooners lineup that will bring back a number of key pieces from their NCAA tournament team.

With the addition of Beers, the back-to-back defending Big 12 champions are loaded for their first run in the SEC, a conference that features women’s basketball powers South Carolina, LSU, and Tennessee.

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Notre Dame’s season ends after falling to Oregon State in Sweet 16

Another year, another elimination in the regional semifinals.

With injuries stripping Notre Dame of its depth, it seemed like only a matter of time before that caught up. It didn’t happen during the first weekend of the NCAA Tournament, but Albany Regional 1 posed tougher competition and thus increased the likelihood of the issue being exposed. Oregon State was the team to do it, beating the Irish in the Sweet 16, 70-65.

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A game that featured eight ties and 11 lead changes was destined to come down to the end. The Irish (27-7) were in front, 59-57, with less than three minutes to play when Donovyn Hunter hit a 3 to give the Beavers (28-7) the lead for good. One possession later, Lily Hansford made another 3 off an offensive rebound, putting the Beavers up four.

The teams continued to trade free throws and layups until the Irish called a timeout down, 67-63, with 26.1 seconds left. Their final hopes were snuffed when Talia von Oelhoffen blocked a [autotag]Sonia Citron[/autotag] 3 and promptly made two free throws after being fouled. At that point, the deficit was too big with too little time left for the Irish.

The Irish scored 26 points off 27 Beavers turnovers, but that was canceled out by losing the rebounding battle, 42-24. The Beavers also exploited the Irish’s lack of available size by winning the battle for points in the paint, 40-28. Also, three Beavers scored 14 points off the bench while [autotag]KK Bransford[/autotag], the Irish’s lone reserve in this game, was kept out of the scoring column.

As expected, Raegan Beers was a problem as she scored 18 points and grabbed 13 rebounds for the Beavers. Also a problem was Timea Gardiner, who also achieved a double-double with 21 points and 11 boards. Hunter scored 11 points, and van Oelhoffen dished out a game-high nine assists in addition to her clutch block of Citron.

Citron led all scorers with 22 points and also had the most rebounds for the Irish with seven. [autotag]Maddy Westbeld[/autotag] scored 19 points but picked up three of her four fouls in the first half, possibly affecting what the Irish could do on defense in the middle. [autotag]Anna DeWolfe[/autotag] had 12 points in her final college game.

[autotag]Hannah Hidalgo[/autotag] tied her season low with 10 points on 4-of-17 shooting. She might have become disconcerted when she was ordered to have her nose ring removed before the start of the second quarter and missed the first four minutes of that quarter while having the issue taken care of.

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WBB Recap: Ducks collapse in second half against the Beavers

Oregon State crushes Oregon in the second half to take Round 1 of the Civil War in Corvallis.

The Oregon women’s basketball team had the Beavers on the ropes in Corvallis, but let Oregon State off the hook due to poor offensive execution.

The Ducks could muster up just 18 points in the second half, while Oregon State got hot and the Beavers took Round 1 of the Civil War 62-41.

Grace VanSlooten led the Ducks with 15 points and Phillippina Kyei added six points and 16 rebounds.

But those efforts weren’t nearly enough against a tenacious Beaver team that made several halftime adjustments after going down 23-15 at halftime.

A part of those adjustments weren’t very complicated. Oregon State began to hit shots, especially its three-pointers. After not hitting one trey in the first half, the Beavers torched the Ducks from the outside by going 5-of-10 from the outside in the second half and 18-of-30 from the field to outscore the Ducks 47-18 after the halftime break.

Raegan Beers had a career night by putting up 24 points and 17 rebounds.

Oregon State was quicker, bigger and quite frankly, tougher than Oregon and that showed up in a big way in the second half. The Ducks just couldn’t get any rhythm offensively and struggled to find open shots.

Oregon fell to 9-5 overall, while the Beavers remained undefeated at 12-0. The Ducks will now go down to Los Angeles to face two Top 10 teams in USC and UCLA.