Prepare for Madness Part 1

Tanner Groves has heard all your jokes. Sure, the Sooner has a distinctive look, more Paul Bunyan than college basketball star. But the shaggy, 6’10”, 235-pound, bearded big man has provided a spark in his first season with the Sooners. He has elevated the Sooners in the inaugural year of the Porter Moser era from a rebuild project to a championship contender.

As the Sooners continue to make a push towards the NCAA tournament, the senior transfer has become a leading factor in the Sooners’ success. Last year at Eastern Washington, Groves was The Big Sky Player of the Year and, along with his brother Jacob, helped lead the Eagles to the NCAA tournament and a near upset of Kansas.

But Tanner had his eye on something more for his final year of college basketball and entered the transfer portal.

After transferring from Eastern Washington to Oklahoma, Tanner has been a leader for the Sooners. He is currently leading all Sooners in scoring and has provided a veteran voice. His energy on the court has been contagious, a steadying force for an upstart Sooner team.

Well before making his impact at Oklahoma, Tanner was turning heads with his play at Eastern Washington, especially on social media.

The Groves brothers became the darlings in the NCAA tournament in 2021. Tanner displayed his infectious personality with his contagious smile all while scoring 35 points on 11-of-18 shooting in a first-round game against Kansas. Jacob scored 23 points on 8-of-11 shooting.

“It’s kind of funny,” Tanner said. “I think it was when Kansas took the lead, they were up like 10, near the end of the game. They were shooting free throws. One of the (KU) guys that was next to me, he was like, ‘Dude, you gotta slow down. You’re keeping your team in it.’

“I was like, ‘What are you talking about? How many points do I have because I have no idea?’ He was like, ‘You got like 30.’ I didn’t know. That was crazy.”

The Groves brothers were blowing up in more places than just on the court. They blew up social media. And had a high time with everything they saw.

“The Kansas game was the best,” Tanner said. “It was both of us. There was just a bunch of funny stuff, talking about Jake as Napoleon Dynamite and a lot of people were saying I was Abraham Lincoln and Will Farrell in ‘Semi-Pro.’

“Jake Groves as Napoleon Dynamite is a classic. That one has to stick.”

Tanner said his favorite social-media post was a tweet about his brother and Eastern Washington teammate Tyler Robertson.

“These guys are going to kill it at LA Fitness in the men’s league,” the tweet said.

Jacob, a 6’7” sophomore, averaged 9.3 points and 4.2 rebounds in 2020-21. As was the case with his brother, he saved his biggest performance for the biggest stage as he scored 23 points and grabbed nine rebounds against KU.

Just six days after the attention-grabbing performance against Kansas, the Groves brothers entered the NCAA transfer portal. Meanwhile, in Norman, Moser and his staff had just gotten off and running when Tanner entered his name into the transfer portal.

Oklahoma was immediately interested but the way in which Oklahoma reached out and made first contact with might not have ever landed them in Norman save for a Twitter direct message.

“After I entered the (transfer) portal, I think it was maybe like a few weeks into being in the portal, and I was just looking through my Twitter messages,” Tanner said. “I saw that Coach Emmanual Dildy from Oklahoma had messaged me.”

It didn’t take long for Tanner to link up with Moser himself.

“I messaged back and within an hour I was on a long FaceTime call with Coach (Moser), and we just started building that relationship,” Tanner said. “And I think within about a week or so, I committed to Oklahoma. And it’s been going from there.

“It was definitely really hard to make a decision solely based off of a couple of phone calls. I’m a fifth-year senior and for me, I don’t really care (about) location or whatever. I’m just looking for the best fit, wherever I can go and play basketball and flourish within my game and be a part of a good system and winning system…. Oklahoma just turned out to be the best fit.”

Tanner and his brother Jacob brought a winning tradition to Oklahoma. While at Eastern Washington, Tanner was a major part of a team that made its first trip to the NCAA tournament in over 6 years and won a regular-season and post-season title in back-to-back seasons.

But Tanner isn’t the only transfer making an impact on the Sooners this season. Jordan Goldwire transferred in from Duke and has been the starting point guard for the Sooners while Tulsa product Ethan Chargois moved in from SMU to provide depth off the bench.

“It is pretty cool with us coming from winning backgrounds … understanding the winning culture and what it takes,” Tanner said. “When you bring in guys that know what it means to win and what it’s like to win on top of having a coach like Coach Moser, when you get a group of guys like that together that is a good base, you’re creating a culture. That was one of the most important things for me, that foundation of all of us together has helped to create a winning culture.”

Sometimes it can be tough to mesh so many different personalities in a short amount of time, but behind the leadership of Moser and the man that has been dubbed “The Lumberjack,” it has been a relatively seamless transition for Sooner basketball.

“It’s always hard to get a bunch of new guys together to get them all on the same page,” Tanner said. “We had been going at it 5 months leading into the season, but we made big strides and progress. We have a lot of potential to be great and the coaches have done an excellent job of getting us to mesh and connect.”

For a first-year head coach, having a leader like Tanner has helped to build a foundation for this year’s squad. It also helps that he loves hoops.

“Tanner’s a perfectionist. He really wants to get it right,” Moser said. “I saw him early on just overthinking a lot of things because he wanted to get it right. When you overthink things, you tend to be a little late recognizing.

“What I’ve seen the last three weeks is his comfortability set in on what we want and what he’s to do. You’re seeing his communication level has been (good), his defense has gotten much better because he just knows and he’s more comfortable.”

Tanner Groves’ passion and energy are undeniable. The talented big man he has helped set a standard in year one of the Porter Moser era, and that standard has no limits as the Sooners prepare for the home stretch of the season and March Madness.-BSM