It seems like nearly everything about college basketball has changed in the past two years. NCAA tournament games were played in near-empty arenas as a precaution because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Roy Williams, Mike Krzyzewski and Jay Wright were still coaching. More than 3,000 players have entered the transfer portal over that span, while name, image and likeness (NIL) deals have taken over roster management and recruiting.
But at Oral Roberts, things are remarkably similar. The Golden Eagles were the darlings of March back in 2021, going on a run to the Sweet 16 as a No. 15 seed behind the heroics of undersized point guard Max Abmas, who scored 29 points in the first round against Ohio State and 26 against Florida. Now, Abmas is leading the charge again as Oral Roberts gears up for another shot at March glory.
After falling short of the suddenly lofty expectations in 2022, coach Paul Mills and a returning core that features two assistant coaches, three starters and five total players from that ’21 team set out to turn things around and bring the Golden Eagles back to March prominence. The result? A team that’s even better than the Sweet 16 team of two years ago. Winners of 17 straight and 27 of their past 28 games, Abmas and the Golden Eagles won’t be sneaking up on anyone this time, but have built perhaps the nation’s best mid-major team thanks to continuity, star power and a key assist from college basketball’s tallest player.
Back in 2021, the Golden Eagles were a No. 15 seed for a reason: They didn’t win a single Division I nonconference game and finished fourth in the Summit League regular-season race, mostly because of a porous defense that ranked outside the top 200 in KenPom’s adjusted efficiency metric. They buckled down on that end of the floor when it mattered in March, but those defensive woes caught up to them the following season.
After dealing with plenty of offseason fanfare due to the previous year’s run and Abmas’s return from testing the NBA draft waters, ORU’s defense actually regressed, ranking 290th, according to KenPom. The result: a third-place finish in the Summit League and a 20-point defeat in the league tournament semifinals.
“The road back to March Madness isn’t easy,” Abmas says. “That’s a big thing we learned last year. It wasn’t a bad season, but it was bad if you look at what we expected to do.”
Mills, who described his previous teams’ defensive numbers as “pretty atrocious,” knew he needed to find a defensive fix to help match his group’s offensive firepower. The top priority? Hit the transfer portal and find size after starting a 6'7" center in 2022.
“If you were seven [feet tall], we were talking every single day,” Mills says.
In his end-of-season meeting, guard Issac McBride pitched Mills on a potential solution: 7'5" skilled big man Connor Vanover, who had seen his minutes at Arkansas evaporate late in the season and was a former high school teammate of McBride’s. Within 30 seconds of starting the meeting, McBride asked Mills whether he’d be interested if Vanover decided to enter the transfer portal.
“I said, ‘If Connor Vanover comes to [us], he’s perfect,’” Mills recalls. “And [McBride] said, ‘You don’t need to do a thing.’”
Sure enough, Vanover entered the transfer portal, and Mills was the first coach to call him. He began a full-court press, pitching Vanover on Oral Roberts, making multiple trips from Tulsa to Fayetteville, Ark., to visit with Vanover over lunches.
“I wore out them roads,” Mills says. “We used to meet at Torchy’s Tacos in Fayetteville, and he was like, ‘Can we meet somewhere else?’ That's how often I was there.”
Vanover, who is tied with Western Kentucky’s Jamarion Sharp as the tallest player in Division I, is perhaps college basketball’s most unique player. He is extremely skilled on the offensive end, taking nearly half his shots this season from three-point range and making them at a 33% clip. Defensively, he’s one of the most prolific shot-blockers in the country, ranking in the top five nationally in block rate. His style of play doesn’t fit everywhere, but it certainly does at Oral Roberts, and his addition has been a huge reason for the team’s huge improvement.
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“Some places would rather have a more traditional post, and it just flows better in the way they play,” Vanover says. “At Oral Roberts, with me, Max [Abmas] and our entire lineup, I just kind of fit with our style. Max is one of the best three-point shooters in the nation. I’m a big guy that can roll to the rim and also pop out and shoot on the perimeter, kind of wreak havoc on the defense.”
With their shot-blocking presence in tow, Mills went to work all summer trying to improve the team’s defense. The coach who two years ago talked about giving his players an assignment to make 20,000 shots in the first six weeks of fall had his veteran group spend more time focusing on getting stops in the offseason, something he had rarely done in previous years. The primary concern with drilling defense in the summer is maintaining focus—“That’s the last thing they want to do,” Mills says. But with an older team and advice from mentors like former Wyoming coach Larry Shyatt and North Texas’s Grant McCasland, Mills got the buy-in necessary to make strides on that end.
It resulted in one of the most improved defensive units in the nation. Oral Roberts is up from No. 290 to No. 105 nationally in defensive efficiency per KenPom, buoyed by a top-50 two-point defense thanks to Vanover’s ability to protect the rim. The offense has also made strides at the rim because of him, with the team shooting 56.8% on two-point field goals, a top-10 mark in the country.
Of course, the biggest reason for Oral Roberts’s renewed relevance is the presence of Abmas, who had opportunities to leave after each of the past two seasons but instead elected to return. His star teammate Kevin Obanor transferred out in 2021 for Texas Tech, where he currently leads the Red Raiders in scoring. In addition to pro opportunities, Abmas could play for any school in the country had he entered the portal himself. He also turned down more money, given that the going rate for NIL deals for many top transfers was well into six figures.
“I think the end goal is, is not just to get all this NIL money, the end goal for me is to play professionally in the NBA for as long as I can play,” Abmas says. “Just understanding that, and understanding that the grass isn't necessarily greener on the other side, and understanding what I had here at Oral Roberts [and the] relationship that I’ve built over the last few years.”
That doesn’t mean the big schools haven’t tried tampering with Abmas. “We’ve got DMs. He’s screenshotted [his] DMs. We’re not naive,” Mills says.
But Abmas wasn’t moved by the big-name interest, especially given his strong relationship with Mills. One of the few Division I coaches to recruit him out of high school, Mills has helped Abmas improve as a pick-and-roll passer and defender for his potential professional future. Abmas is also enrolled in a premed program and set to graduate this spring with a GPA between 3.7 and 3.8. He scored his 2,500th career point this past weekend and ranks among the top five scorers in program history.
“He just cares about the right things. He has wonderful parents; his head is screwed on tight. He avoids distractions,” Mills says. “I love the kid.”
Even with a 29–4 record entering Tuesday’s championship game against North Dakota State, Oral Roberts faced the same must-win situation it did two years before when it entered the title game 15–10. Despite playing a top-15 nonconference schedule, ORU’s lack of Quad 1 wins likely would have kept them out of the Dance. Mills already had his stump speech prepared, emphasizing the team’s lack of opportunities because of the resource gap between high-majors and smaller schools like Oral Roberts.
Thankfully, Oral Roberts left no doubt. In perhaps the most dominant performance by any team this Championship Week, the Golden Eagles led 51–20 at halftime and finished as 92–58 victors, launching a somewhat subdued celebration from a team that expected to make it here.
“We got to experience what it was like to play at the highest level and to win games in the tournament,” Abmas says. “We understand what it takes.”
Two years ago, Ohio State’s C.J. Walker said moments after their stunning upset loss that they had taken Oral Roberts for granted. This time, Oral Roberts won’t have the luxury of taking anyone by surprise, but it might not matter. The Golden Eagles have the formula for a deep tournament run, maybe even further than the one that shocked the world two years ago.
