Sooners Meet the Press in Kansas City

KANSAS CITY - As the preseason winds down and the Sooners inch closer towards the first game of the 2019-20 season, head coach Lon Kruger and a collection of OU student-athletes previewed the upcoming campaign at Big 12 Media Day. Jamal Bieniemy, Kristian Doolittle, De'Vion Harmon, Brady Manek and Austin Reaves joined Kruger at Sprint Center, home of the 2020 Big 12 Championship, in Kansas City.

Fans will get their first glimpse of OU in game action in less than one week when Oklahoma hosts Southeastern Oklahoma State on Tuesday, Oct. 29 at Lloyd Noble Center.

Below is a transcript from a portion of Kruger's press conference at Big 12 Media Day. Videos are also available of Kruger's full press conference along with Big 12 Now interviews with Doolittle and Bieniemy.

LON KRUGER MEDIA DAY PRESS CONFERENCE

Opening Statement

Everyone is working hard, pretty healthy at this point. Lot of new players on the roster. Only three guys that have played any minutes at Oklahoma last year. Everyone is new, everyone is
feeling their way around a little bit, determining roles. Great energy, great enthusiasm. More length, more size. Excited about watching this group grow and develop, hopefully become a good basketball team.

One of your new guys, (De'Vion) Harmon, give us an update on how he's progressing.

He's been terrific. Couldn't be more pleased. We started workouts in June, the first summer session. Couldn't be more pleased by the progress he's made from that point to this point. Very well-prepared coming out of high school. Played for a very good program, a lot of good tradition. Fundamentally very sound. He had a great base from which to work. He's doing terrific. He's a tough guy that makes players around him better. He works extremely hard every day. Just a terrific teammate and a good guy to be around every day.

Obviously you added a lot of new faces, pretty big signing class. A lot of talent. How have you balanced the challenge of adding new faces?

It's a little bit unusual to add that many people at one time, new people, new faces at one time. Kristian Doolittle and Brady Manek and Jamal Bieniemy, the three guys returning, have done a terrific job of helping them understand what needs to be done, understand what lies ahead. Any time it comes from player to player it's much more effective than it's coming from coach to player trying to prepare them for what lies ahead. They've done a good job. The new guys have been enthusiastic, feeling their way a bit, determining what their roles are going to be. That's determined by what they do every day in practice and early-season games leading up to conference play. Again, it's been a fun group to work with every day in terms of watching them work to get better, work to improve in areas where they need to improve in.

Give us something that has intrigued you about these guys so far in practice, maybe that surprised you.

Found out early on that the versatility is going to be a strength. I think the depth will be a strength. A lot of guys interchangeable parts, chance to play bigger or smaller depending on maybe opponent or the play of our guys. Probably the two things there, versatility, flexibility in terms of moving people around, taking advantage of some mismatches. And depth, being able to play nine or ten people hopefully on a pretty consistent basis.