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OU Basketball: How Oklahoma's 'Relationship' With Aaliyah Chavez Brought the Star to Norman

Jennie Baranczyk on Monday spoke publicly for the first time since the Sooners signed the top-ranked recruit in the country.

Ryan Chapman

Monterey's Aaliyah Chavez announces she will be playing for the University of Oklahoma in front of an auditorium filled with fans at Monterey High School on Tuesday, March 25, 2025 in Lubbock, TX.
Monterey's Aaliyah Chavez announces she will be playing for the University of Oklahoma in front of an auditorium filled with fans at Monterey High School on Tuesday, March 25, 2025 in Lubbock, TX. / Jacob Lujan/For The Lubbock Avalanche-Journal / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images
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Jennie Baranczyk and her Oklahoma coaching staff had to tune into ESPN just like everybody else to see what program Aaliyah Chavez would choose. 

The top-ranked recruit and Gatorade National Player of the Year made the wait worthwhile for the Sooners, and OU officially signed the highest rated recruit in program history last Thursday.

“You don’t get to usually watch it on ESPN live and not have any idea. We had no idea,” Baranczyk said Monday on a video call with media in her first press conference since signing Chavez. “… We were hopeful, but it was pretty cool. And now she’s just kind of been on a tour everywhere and it’s back to work as usual.”

The signing concluded OU’s pursuit of Chavez, a recruitment that spanned multiple years, in an effort that saw the Sooners beat Texas, UCLA, South Carolina and Texas Tech for her signature. 

“Her recruiting process started when I first got here,” Baranczyk said. “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. … I’ve never had so many assumptions outside of what people think happened in a recruiting process (rather) 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.”

And Chavez should fit seamlessly into Baranczyk’s up-tempo attack. 

She closed her career at Monterey High School in Lubbock, TX, in impressive fashion, averaging 34.9 points, 9.1 rebounds, 4.3 assists and 3.7 steals per game. 

Chavez led the Plainsmen to the 5A Division II state title, and she helped her AAU team, CyFair Elite, win the championship at Nike Nationals in both 2022 and 2024.

Her experience around the best players throughout high school led Chavez and her family to look long and hard at multiple factors before selecting a college landing spot.

“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,” Baranczyk said. “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.”

For Baranczyk, recruiting a player the caliber of Chavez was different. 

She’s landed highly sought after players before, both in the transfer portal in Payton Verhulst and Raegan Beers, but also through the high school ranks with Sahara Williams. 

But the pursuit of the nation’s top player had its own challenges. 

“There were so many rumors that we were paying her millions of dollars, and it's just simply not true,” Baranczyk said. “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 want to believe. … 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.”

The attention didn’t seem to faze Chavez, though. 

On top of leading her high school team to glory, Chavez scored 10 points and added four assists in the 2025 McDonald’s All-American Game, and she won the event’s 3-point shooting competition. 

Now, Chavez will join fellow freshmen Keziah Lofton and Brooklyn Stewart to help OU’s returning roster build on last season’s run to the Sweet Sixteen. 

“Aaliyah loves playing basketball. So she can shut everything out and she just wants to go out and play,” Baranczyk said. “That’s my favorite thing about her. … She wants to play with a team. She likes to set people up. She can shoot the ball. … She’s not going to ever stop working.”

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Ryan Chapman
RYAN CHAPMAN

Ryan is managing editor at Sooners On SI and covers a number of sports in and around Norman and Oklahoma City. Working both as a journalist and a sports talk radio host, Ryan has covered the Oklahoma Sooners, the Oklahoma City Thunder, the United States Men’s National Soccer Team, the Oklahoma City Energy and more. Since 2019, Ryan has simultaneously pursued a career as both a writer and a sports talk radio host, working for the Flagship for Oklahoma sports, 107.7 The Franchise, as well as AllSooners.com. Ryan serves as a contributor to The Franchise’s website, TheFranchiseOK.com, which was recognized as having the “Best Website” in 2022 by the Oklahoma Association of Broadcasters. Ryan holds an associate’s degree in Journalism from Oklahoma City Community College in Oklahoma City, OK. 

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