Sooners Still Benefiting From Griffin’s Stardom
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: October 31, 2009
NORMAN, Okla. (AP) — Tiny Gallon had never considered playing for Oklahoma until he started hearing from Blake Griffin and Willie Warren.
Griffin and Warren, the Sooners stars, were looking for the next group of talented players to join a program on the rise again, and they were able to get Gallon’s attention.
“Blake kind of tricked me in a way because he said he might stay here, so I thought, ‘O.K., I might play with Blake,’ ” Gallon said. “But then I knew after the numbers he was putting up, he was out.”
Gallon says he does not hold any grudges against Griffin for heading to the N.B.A., where he was the No. 1 overall draft pick this year. Griffin helped connect Gallon with Sooners Coach Jeff Capel, who continues to distinguish himself from his predecessor Kelvin Sampson as a top-notch recruiter.
For years, the Sooners got the most out of players who were not destined to play in the N.B.A.. Long after the days of Wayman Tisdale and Mookie Blaylock, Oklahoma continued a 25-year run of consecutive postseason appearances that included 20 trips to the N.C.A.A. tournament.
Now the Sooners, who were ranked No. 17 in the Associated Press preseason poll released Thursday, are trying to build on back-to-back N.C.A.A. tournament appearances with three McDonald’s all-Americans on the roster: Gallon, Warren and point guard Tommy Mason-Griffin.
Capel credits Griffin, who also played in the high school showcase, for helping land that level of talent. Before Griffin’s arrival, Capel said he would be questioned by players, parents and coaches, “How many pros have you guys put out?”
“At the time, I didn’t have any, and our program hadn’t had a first-round pick since ’88. We had Eduardo Najera, who was in the N.B.A., or is in the N.B.A., but that’s it,” Capel said. “Now it’s another thing to cross off that they can’t use, that other people can’t use against us.”
Gallon was not familiar with Oklahoma when he first met Capel during his junior year of high school, but he knew all about Griffin. Eventually, so would everyone else who follows basketball, and Griffin’s exploits have been a key example Capel can provide to prospects.
“You can come to Oklahoma and be a national player of the year,” Capel said. “You can come to Oklahoma and you can leave school early. You can come and be the face of college basketball.”
“It is a football school, and people want to use that as a negative, but you can come here and you can do that.”
Beyond keeping Griffin close to home to play for the Sooners, Capel has also proved to be an attractive personality to top high school players. Gallon was able to connect with him over a shared love of Jay-Z’s music, and Warren and Mason-Griffin were drawn by Capel’s experience as a college guard at Duke.
“I just wanted to play for a guard, a coach who’s had the experience, played in the Final Four, played in the championship and also played for a good coach so he’s not just getting the stuff he needs to be a great coach out of books,” Warren said. “He’s lived it.”
Gallon and Mason-Griffin had been A.A.U. teammates and decided to go to college together, so Capel’s inroads with both helped land him the program’s first recruiting class with two McDonald’s all-Americans.
The turnaround is even more drastic considering that one of Capel’s first challenges at Oklahoma was dealing with the fallout after another McDonald’s all-American, Scottie Reynolds, decided not to be a Sooner after Capel was hired in 2006.
Up against recruiting sanctions left over from Sampson’s tenure, it was not until a few months later — when Griffin committed to play for him — that Capel felt confident he had be able to turn the program around.
“Once that happened, then I knew the program was going to change,” Capel said. “I knew how good he was. I thought he was underrated, but I knew how good he was.”
