Oklahoma State women loaded with star transfers, picked to win the Big 12 championship

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — There are two big questions surrounding the Oklahoma State women's basketball team this season.

Are there enough shots to go around? And can the No. 22 Cowgirls finally win a Big 12 Conference championship?

After loading up with arguably the nation's top transfer class, headlined by two-time All-American forward Audi Crooks and do-it-all sensation Liv McGill, Jacie Hoyt's team was picked to win the league in its preseason poll of coaches . The Cowgirls earned seven first-place votes, one more than defending regular-season conference champion TCU.

“This is by far the most talented roster I've been privileged to coach,” Hoyt said Wednesday at the Big 12's annual media summit. “I think just being around elite players every day that have a mindset of getting better, and ultimately winning at all costs — it doesn't matter what that looks like for us. We have a lot of firepower. A lot of weapons. And our team understands that they might have to make sacrifices that they didn't have to make before. But ultimately, they want to win.”

That hasn't happened a whole lot around Stillwater. The Cowgirls haven't won a conference championship since 1991, when they won the second of back-to-back Big 8 titles. That also was the only year they've won a postseason conference tournament.

Hoyt has turned around Oklahoma State's fortunes, though, along with its expectations. The Cowgirls won 25 games two years ago and 24 last season, their most wins ever over a two-year span, and are coming off a second-round NCAA Tournament appearance.

Yet sustaining success in an era of roster upheaval means constantly reinventing your team. And while Hoyt lost several players to graduation and the transfer portal — Amari Whiting to Iowa, Jadyn Wooten to the rival Horned Frogs — she replenished with a transfer class that is quite possibly the envy of the women's college basketball world.

McGill was the first big catch.

The first-team All-SEC guard was the only player in the nation to average at least 20 points, six boards and six assists last season. Her importance to the Gators was evident in this: She ended up taking 591 field-goal attempts, the seventh-most nationally.

Soon after her commitment, Crooks announced that she was leaving Iowa State and joining the Cowgirls.

It was a stunning transfer in part because Crooks grew up in Algona, about 90 minutes from the Iowa State campus in Ames, and she had become one of the most beloved players in school history. Crooks averaged 25.8 points per game last year, second-best nationally, and most assumed she would be back for one more season with the school she'd led to three NCAA Tournaments.

Instead, she was among nine Cyclones players who put their names in the transfer portal.

“Honestly, I knew Coach Hoyt really well and we've played her the last few years, and she was able to hone in on my strengths but also my weaknesses. We lost quite a few of those matchups," Crooks said. “She knew me like the back of her hand, so I knew that she could help me to improve on those areas I needed.”

So, as the Cowgirls prepare for a season of enormous expectations, are there enough shots to go around in Stillwater?

“I pride myself on doing whatever it takes to win,” McGill said. “In the past I've had to put up a lot of shots. With my teammates now, I'm not going to have to do that, and can just affect the game in other areas, which I'm more than happy to do.”

“I would say something similar,” Crooks added. “When you have so many threats — there's only so many possessions in a basketball game. If we're knocking down 3s, I'm happy to kick it out to the shooters. I'm willing to spread the love.”

For all the roster turnover in the Big 12, and college basketball at large, it was a relatively stable offseason for head coaches. Just four of the 32 combined men's and women's teams will have new voices on the sideline this season.

On the men's side, Arizona State brought in Randy Bennett from Saint Mary's to replace Bobby Hurley, Cincinnati hired Jerrod Calhoun to replace Wes Miller and Kansas State tapped Belmont's Casey Alexander after a somewhat messy breakup with Jerome Tang.

The only newcomer on the women's side is Gabe Lazo, who replaced Sytia Messer at UCF.

“It's something you can't say ‘no’ to,” Lazo said. “I was hoping I would have an opportunity when I saw the job opened.”

Arizona State forward McKinna Brackens, Nastja Claessens of Kansas State and BYU guard Delaney Gibb are among several Big 12 players who gained international experience playing for their national teams this past summer.

Brackens helped deliver the U.S. the gold medal at the 3x3 under-23 Women’s World Cup in China. Claessens played for Belgium at the FIBA World Cup in Germany. And Gibb played for Canada at the Olympic prequalifying tournament in Mexico.

“I think just being around such elite athletes was so cool,” Gibb said. “I learned so much.”

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