Report: Oklahoma F Akol Mawein Enters NCAA Transfer Portal
Oklahoma’s basketball roster apparently just got a little thinner — for now.
According to a post from verbalcommits.com, junior forward Akol Mawein has entered the transfer portal.
Mawein’s potential departure wasn’t unexpected. In addition to playing minimal minutes for the Sooners last season in Porter Moser’s first year, Mawein has deep personal ties to former OU assistant David Patrick, who recently took the head coaching job at Sacramento State.
Mawein, who was born in South Sudan and raised in Sydney, Australia — Patrick is also from Australia — played in 18 games last season, including 10 Big 12 Conference games.
After playing in high school at Southwest Christian Academy in Little Rock, the 6-foot-8, 221-pound Mawein became the No. 1 junior college power forward in the nation at Navarro College, where he averaged 13.5 points and 5.0 rebounds as a freshman and 12.5 points and 5.2 rebounds as a sophomore.
In his one season at OU, Mawein had his best two performances in back-to-back games against this year’s national champion (5 points and 4 rebounds in 14 minutes against Kansas) and last year’s national champion (6 points and 4 rebounds in 13 minutes against Baylor).
For the season, Mawein averaged 3.8 minutes, 1.2 points and 1.1 rebounds per game.
Mawein's departure is OU's second this week. True freshman Alston Mason also entered the transfer portal.
It's widely expected that coach Porter Moser will lean heavily on the transfer portal for next season, in addition to having already signed three incoming freshmen. OU loses three graduating seniors and is still waiting to learn senior Umoja Gibson's intentions (he'll test the NBA Draft waters) but is expected to have largely everyone else back from this year's team.
