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What ‘embracing the portal’ means to OU head coach Porter Moser

Bob Przybyloby: Bob Przybylo21 hours agoBPrzybylo
Xzayvier Brown3
OU guard Xzayvier Brown. (Nate Billings - Imagn Images

Every year it has been some sort of progression with OU head coach Porter Moser when it comes to the transfer portal.

Little by little, figuring things out. Figuring it and learning to love every minute of it. This is what college basketball is in the 2020s, might as well embrace it.

Embracing it, leaning into it, use the term you want. What is obvious, though, is that Moser is on the right side of the battle at this moment.

It is working. Look at the OU transfer class. It is absolutely working.

“I was never fighting it,” Moser told SoonerScoop. “It was more of mentality. It’s just that way in life. Complaining about it doesn’t help. It’s funny, I’ll go out somewhere and people who don’t know about NIL, don’t know about the portal, but they don’t like it. The general public, they’re like, ‘Man, I don’t know how you guys do it. I don’t like it.’ And I get it, because you can fall into that trap and just keep talking about all the negatives. So when I said lean into it, it was more of a mind shift.

“It’s like, this is our reality, let’s lean into it and make the best decisions we can make in it. And I also leaned into it with the mentality of, we went after some guys that have played at a high level, and we didn’t go after sheer numbers, for a lot of reasons.”

Now you can see OU learning some intricacies. No reason to ever get like seven or eight guys. Most guys entering the portal are looking for more playing time, more opportunities. So it is about being smart in how you go about things.

That is where OU feels like it is in a different stratosphere than even a few years ago. Understanding how things get done and how to get them done.

“One, you have a certain budget you can work under, and then the other, I have found that they’re in the portal for a handful of reasons,” Moser said. “A big one is they want a better situation to play an impact role, and if you’ve got seven of those, you’re not going to have seven roles for that. It doesn’t mean I’ll never sign more than four. It’s just this structure of how he built his team.”

This quartet, man, hard to not be too excited. Final Four experience, Nijel Pack, playing in the ACC like Tae Davis. A young pup ready to blossom in Derrion Reid and a general on the court like Xzayvier Brown.

Not fighting, purely embracing. What a feeling, and OU is loving it right now.

“And I just think the four guys in the portal, leaning into those guys, we leaned into just the positivity of like it was just a mindset,” Moser said. “Like, this is our new world. Let’s not complain about it. Let’s just make the best of it. And I think we got four guys that fit who we are, how I want to play, how we want to play, and I’m excited to get to battle with them.”

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