SPOKANE, Wash. — Raegan Beers decision to transfer to Oklahoma last year changed everything for the Sooners.
Beers, who led Oregon State to the Elite Eight last year and was the No. 1 player in the transfer portal after the 2024 NCAA Tournament, came to Oklahoma with big goals.
She wants to go pro and make it further in March Madness than she had previously done.
But there’s a big blue road block standing on the third-seeded Oklahoma’s pathway forward.
The Sooners are scheduled to play second-seeded Connecticut Saturday in the Sweet 16.
The matchup against women’s college basketball’s most successful team might be daunting for some.
But not so much Oklahoma.
“When you think of women’s basketball, you think UConn, you think South Carolina. You think all these really good teams. But I want to put Oklahoma on the map,” forward Sahara Williams said. “So I think this game is a good test of who we are and see where we want to go and how bad we really want to be good.”
Williams signed with Oklahoma out of high school because she believed in coach Jennie Baranczyk’s vision and wanted to help take Oklahoma to new heights.
Oklahoma had been on an upward trajectory since Baranczyk took over the program in 2021 as the team made three straight NCAA Tournaments heading into this season.
But Beers’ arrival in a lot of ways fast tracked that process.
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“Getting Reagan was like, ‘OK, finally, we’re doing it. It’s coming to life,’ ” Williams said. “Understand that we have one of the best players in the country in Oklahoma, like, we’re building something.”
But Williams knew she had to get better, work hard and elevate her game.
Doing what she did as a freshman would simply not be enough.
She watched how Beers operates and tries to follow in some of her footsteps.
If you enter the gym 30 to 45 minutes before Oklahoma practices, you’ll likely spot Williams and Beers doing 100 Mikan drills or shooting free throws.
Learning to play with Beers — a true post presence the Sooners have lacked in recent years — took time. Oklahoma was 6-5 just before Christmas, with half their losses coming against mid-major programs.
Each player had to do some reflection.
Collectively, the Sooners had to improve their 3-point shooting, but individual players had to get comfortable in new roles.
Williams played center last year and spent most of her time defending low block post play.
But with a true rim protector in Beers, Williams is often now defending the opposing team’s best guard.
Post passing is still a work in progress as is limiting turnovers.
“We’ve had to kind of fall down and get up and work through that,” Baranczyk said. “I also think that overall, you’re just trying to work on your professional development, your skill set, to be able to play to each other’s strengths. I think the other thing that we’ve really had to go through in that is we can’t be a one-hit wonder. We can’t have where we’re just going to feed Raegan every possession of every game that we lose the rest of our movement. And we’ve had to grow through that and we’ve had to learn a lot.”
Oklahoma has won 11 of its past 12 games.
But even beyond this season, the future is bright.
The team’s three leading scorers, Beers, Payton Verhulst and Williams, are all expected to return. And just this week, Oklahoma landed 2025 No. 1 recruit Aaliyah Chavez.
“The trajectory is only going up from here,” Beers said. “Since the minute I got here, it has been going up.”
