{"id":45133,"date":"2025-05-20T11:56:08","date_gmt":"2025-05-20T11:56:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/45133\/"},"modified":"2025-05-20T11:56:08","modified_gmt":"2025-05-20T11:56:08","slug":"sooners-star-to-utah-jazz-at-no-5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/45133\/","title":{"rendered":"Sooners star to Utah Jazz at No. 5"},"content":{"rendered":"

NORMAN \u2014 Following his impressive freshman season with OU men’s basketball<\/a>, Jeremiah Fears has skyrocketed up NBA mock drafts in recent months.<\/p>\n

ESPN released<\/a> its latest edition Monday, which projects Fears<\/a> to be selected fifth overall by the Utah Jazz<\/a>. The uber-talented 18-year-old averaged 17.1 points, 4.1 rebounds and 4.1 assists in 34 games and helped lead the Sooners<\/a> to their first NCAA Tournament appearance since the 2020-21 season.<\/p>\n

Fears, initially a top-25 recruit nationally in the 2025 class,\u00a0reclassified last summer<\/a>\u00a0to join OU. His talent, along with his high usage rate began turning the heads of NBA draft analysts early in the season.<\/p>\n

Fears scored 20 points in OU\u2019s season-ending loss to UConn<\/a> in the first round of the NCAA Tournament.<\/p>\n

“It’s one thing to reclassify, then he missed the whole summer,” Moser said following the game. “I look back on his youthfulness when he got here, not having played at this level and then how he grew, and grew and grew.\u201d<\/p>\n

OU hasn’t had a player selected in the NBA Draft since\u00a0Trae Young<\/a>\u00a0(No. 5 overall) in 2018. The four players projected to be selected before Fears include forward Cooper Flagg<\/a> (No. 1 to Dallas), guard Dylan Harper<\/a> (No. 2 to San Antonio), guard\/forward Airious “Ace” Bailey<\/a> (No. 3 to Philadelphia) and guard VJ Edgecombe<\/a> (No. 4 to Charlotte).<\/p>\n

More: Who are top OU softball players in 50 years of program history? Meet 50 greatest Sooners<\/a><\/p>\n

Colton\u00a0Sulley\u00a0covers\u00a0college sports for The Oklahoman. Have a story idea for\u00a0Colton? He can be reached at\u00a0csulley@oklahoman.com\u00a0or on X\/Twitter at\u00a0@colton_sulley. Support\u00a0Colton’s work and that of other Oklahoman journalists by purchasing a\u00a0digital subscription today at subscribe.oklahoman.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NORMAN \u2014 Following his impressive freshman season with OU men’s basketball, Jeremiah Fears has skyrocketed up NBA mock…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":45134,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3785],"tags":[1583,7,319,10601,217,325,2340,98,130,133,3726,131,423,318,70,85,6,12,231,428,62,67,169,310,2400,5985,61,81,65,5979,66,83,64,63,82,424,2196,929,422,427,3972],"class_list":{"0":"post-45133","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-utah-jazz","8":"tag-athletics","9":"tag-basketball","10":"tag-college","11":"tag-college-athletics","12":"tag-college-basketball","13":"tag-college-sports","14":"tag-connecticut","15":"tag-draft","16":"tag-espn","17":"tag-espn-inc","18":"tag-football","19":"tag-inc","20":"tag-jazz","21":"tag-mens","22":"tag-national","23":"tag-national-sports","24":"tag-nba","25":"tag-nba-draft","26":"tag-ncaa","27":"tag-ncaa-mens-basketball-tournament","28":"tag-neutral","29":"tag-news","30":"tag-of","31":"tag-oklahoma","32":"tag-oklahoma-sooners","33":"tag-oklahoma-sooners-football","34":"tag-overall","35":"tag-overall-neutral","36":"tag-point","37":"tag-sooners","38":"tag-sports","39":"tag-sports-news","40":"tag-the","41":"tag-to","42":"tag-to-the-point","43":"tag-tournament","44":"tag-university","45":"tag-university-of-connecticut","46":"tag-utah","47":"tag-utah-jazz","48":"tag-utahjazz"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45133","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45133"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45133\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45134"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45133"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45133"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45133"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}