Oklahoma's Aaliyah Chavez & Sahara Williams Earn Preseason All-SEC Honors

Oklahoma did not need another reminder that Aaliyah Chavez is a problem. The SEC coaches still gave everybody one anyway.

Chavez was named to the Preseason All-SEC first team this week, while Sahara Williams landed on the second team after voting from the league’s 16 head coaches. Coaches could not vote for their own players, which makes these honors a little cleaner than the usual preseason noise.

For the Sooners, it also fits the bigger picture. Oklahoma is ranked, the roster still has star power, and the league is not pretending otherwise.

Chavez is the headline for obvious reasons. The sophomore is coming off one of the best freshman seasons in program history after winning ESPN and CBS Sports National Freshman of the Year. She led Oklahoma at 18.4 points per game, added 4.2 assists and 3.8 rebounds, and paced all true freshmen nationally in scoring. She also earned All-SEC second-team honors and WBCA All-America honorable mention as a first-year player. That is not a soft debut. That is a player who forced her way into the league’s upper tier immediately.

The supporting numbers still look ridiculous when you line them up. Chavez scored 625 points as a freshman, the second-most by a first-year player in Oklahoma history. She shot 92.9 percent from the free-throw line, set an NCAA freshman record there, matched OU’s single-season mark, and made 62 straight free throws at one point. She also took home a league-record eight SEC Freshman of the Week awards. Double figures in 33 of 34 games. Twenty-point games in 12 of them, most among true freshmen in the country. If the coaches put her on the preseason first team, it was not out of courtesy.

Williams is the other piece that should not get lost. The senior forward just turned in the best statistical season of her career and now enters the year as one of the more complete forwards in the league. She averaged career highs of 12.4 points, 7.9 rebounds, and 3.8 assists while adding 1.1 steals. The only other Power Five player to hit that combination last season was UConn’s Sarah Strong. That tells you what Oklahoma has in her. She is not just a rebounder. She is not just a scorer. She impacts the game in a bunch of different ways.

Williams has also been about as durable and consistent as it gets. She has started every game of her college career since arriving in Norman, crossed the 1,000-point mark to become the 40th player in program history to do it, and kept expanding her game through Oklahoma’s move into the SEC. She even spent the summer winning gold with the United States at the FIBA 3x3 World Cup. For a senior leader on a team still sorting through new pieces, that kind of reliability is very important.

The team context around the honors is familiar. Oklahoma was picked sixth in the SEC preseason media poll, behind South Carolina, Texas, LSU, Vanderbilt, and Kentucky. The Sooners have finished fifth in each of their first two seasons in the league, so the media is not exactly going out on a limb here. It is still a tough draw.

Vanderbilt’s Mikayla Blakes was named Preseason Player of the Year and joined Chavez on a loaded first team that also included names from Kentucky, LSU, Ole Miss, South Carolina, Texas, and Vanderbilt. Williams’ second-team group was just as deep.

For Oklahoma, the takeaway is pretty simple. The Sooners have two proven pieces the rest of the league already respects, and they still have to build enough around them to climb in a conference that does not offer many free nights. Chavez does not need to prove she belongs anymore. Williams has already shown she can produce at a high level in multiple ways. The next step is whether that star power turns into a team that finishes higher than the middle of the SEC pack.

The calendar gets real soon. Oklahoma hosts Southern Nazarene in a free exhibition on Oct. 25 at Lloyd Noble Center, then opens the regular season Nov. 2 against North Carolina in Paris on ESPN2. That is a glamorous start and a hard one.

If Chavez and Williams play like preseason All-SEC players, the Sooners will have a chance to make noise. If the supporting cast catches up around them, they may have a chance to do more than that.