NORMAN — Signing point guard Aaliyah Chavez to the Sooners' 2025 recruiting class was a monumental moment for the program.

OU head coach Jennie Baranczyk knows it, too.

After a length recruitment that featured dozens of Power Four programs in hot pursuit, the Sooners inked Chavez earlier this month. Chavez announced her commitment last month during a ceremony that was broadcast live on ESPN.

Chavez — the top overall prospect in the 2025 class — averaged 37.8 points and 10.1 rebounds per game as a junior at Monterey High School before leading her team to a state championship as a senior. She was named the Gatorade Player of the Year as a senior.

With Chavez in tow, the Sooners head into next season with huge expectations. The Sooners are fresh off a run to the Sweet 16 and now add Chavez to a returning group that includes prominent players Reagen Beers, Payton Verhulst and Sahara Williams.

During a Monday press conference on Zoom, Baranczyk discussed Chavez' recruitment process and what she adds to the Sooners' roster.

(Note: The transcript has been edited for length and clarity).

"Her recruiting process started when I first got here and we tried to recruit obviously young players and you try to develop relationships, and at the same time it’s been a really long process. But it also feels like yesterday watching her before she was in high school. It gives you a lot of faith in, they’re people of their word. And we’ve talked a ton and everybody makes so many assumptions. I’ve never had so many assumptions outside of what people think happened in a recruiting process than what actually did happen.

"At the end of the day she picked our program because of the relationships she has with our coaches, our players. She really liked our team. And just a style of play that really fit. So that was kind of it."

"Aaliyah loves playing basketball. So she can shut everything off and she just wants to go out and play. That's my favorite thing about her. My favorite thing about her is she wants to play with a team. She likes to set people up. She can shoot the ball... She just loves training. She loves the game. I've seen her in games where she's up by 100 and she hits a half-court shot to end the third quarter and she dives on the floor with a smile on her face. She just loves it.

"That's what you want to keep. You always hear keep the main thing the main thing. Her main thing is just to keep that joy of playing, because she's going to work. She really wants to work."

"She really watched a lot of basketball this year… A lot of it isn’t just the pace of play and playing fast, it’s obviously getting her in different positions and playing in some space and having some really good returners coming back, too. She looked at this and she’s looking at rosters and she wants to put herself in a position to help come in and be able to lead in a way, but also have really great leadership around her. So she’s just excited to be able to get in.

"So of course it’s about the pace of play and the style of play, but it’s also about making those reads. And they’re people that do their homework and they’re looking at, OK, where’s a place that she can get better? And so she wants to get better. She’s not a player that’s coming in with a lot of ego. She’s confident, but she also knows she has a lot of work to do. So style of play was maybe the number one thing that we talked about and she’s going to get to come in and play with some great players that have high level basketball feel."

"There were so many rumors that we were paying her millions of dollars, and it's just simply not true. That was something that was hard to navigate even in your own locker room because there are so many different things that people just say to say. As much as even what schools you're recruiting against, there was so many opinions out there on who you're recruiting against and how much they're paying. Then the world of social media just kind of takes it where they want to take it

."As much as her family wants to say, hold on, we're in this for the right reasons. We're still looking for the right fit. People are gonna believe what they wanna believe. So that has been a lot more interesting because there's so much attention on her because she's a highly-ranked player, she's the national player of the year and there was so much that went into that. So that was just an interesting process trying to navigate from our seat because we've never had to navigate.

"... And oh by the way, you have the portal opening the same day they're announcing it and the day before we go to the Sweet 16. As much as it was awesome, it was also so much more to navigate that we didn't even comprehend until you're in it.... So you're trying to constantly navigate that while coaching your team. Life is changing, and it's every day, every hour something different is coming up.

"She did pick it for the right reasons, and I'm really proud of that. I'm really proud of the fact she wants to come play with these women in the locker room because that's what we have to constantly hold and gate keep, because it's still college athletics. You still wanna play basketball with your best friends, and oh by the way you've still gotta work really hard to compete for championships. That part hasn't changed. That's something we haven't done that we wanna do, so we're really hungry but we've gotta get better. That's where our focus has stayed."

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