Oklahoma’s 2021 Prospects: Where Are They Now?

One of my favorite things to do, especially in today’s transfer portal world, is to go back and look at previous player rankings and see where the athletes are today. It’s not an ego thing or anything like that, it’s a pride thing for our girls from Oklahoma. In my “man cave,” I have four TVs and on any given night, you will find four different womens basketball games on all of them, from D-I to NAIA to JuCo. I love keeping track of our players. Thanks to the bosses for letting me update you guys, as well.

The 2021 class was the first one that I was ever responsible for ranking and in the world of Covid, it was not an easy thing to do. Some players who should have been much higher were probably overlooked. Two of those players were the twins from Jones, Tirzah and Trinity Moore. Ranked No. 57 and No. 58, respectively, both players were Division-I players who saw immediate playing time with Oral Roberts. Tirzah won Summit League Freshman of the Year. However, the two have since transferred with Trinity heading to Stephen F. Austin and Tirzah moving to West Virginia. Trinity has seen time in both SFA games this season and is averaging 6.0 ppg. Tirzah has not played for the Mountaineers yet.

Our No. 21-ranked prospect, Jade Upshaw (Kellyville) has transferred from Arkansas State to Central Arkansas, where she continues to put up big numbers at the D-I level. So far this season, Jade is averaging 12 ppg to go along with 5.5 rpg. Speaking of big-time transfers, Kaylen Nelson (Tulsa Union) played at Old Dominion where she saw the floor a lot, maybe just not the minutes that she would’ve liked. But, she definitely found a much better situation for herself with the Bradley Braves. In the season opening road game for the Braves in Kansas City, Kaylen dropped 31 points in 32 minutes of action!

In Tulsa, Head Coach Angie Nelp has steadily been collecting some of the best talent in Oklahoma and it all started with the class of 2021. The key addition from that class was No. 18-ranked Temira Poindexter (Sapulpa) who didn’t take long to prove that she was most definitely ranked too low. She was the AAC Freshman of the Year for the Golden Hurricane while putting up some massive point and rebound numbers. In the WNIT tournament, Temira had 29 points against Wyoming. Joining Temira for the last few seasons at Tulsa are No. 10-ranked Alyssa Parmer (Putnam City North) and No. 7-ranked Delanie Crawford (Piedmont).

Of the top-4 players from the 2021 class, two are still at their original school and two have transferred. No. 4-ranked Kendra Gillispie started out at Baylor where she played for two seasons before transferring to Arkansas State. She is still ramping up her minutes with the Red Wolves as the season progresses, but her rebounding numbers (7.0 rpg) are already looking strong. No. 3-ranked Emrie Ellis (Vanoss) has played 55 games for the Razorbacks over her career, all of them off of the bench where she is averaging 1.7 ppg.

Chantae Embry (Norman) was our No. 2-ranked player in the class of 2021 and initially she attended Texas Tech where she averaged 4.5 ppg and 2.6 rpg. Last season was her first at SMU where she scored 20-plus points four separate times. Ironically enough, two of those times were against Oklahoma and Oral Roberts. So far this season, Chantae has put up a 16 point, 12 rebound game against UC Riverside about a week ago.

Our No. 1-ranked player from the class of 2021, Aaliyah Moore (Moore HS) has been a Texas Longhorn from the start. She will probably go down as one of the greatest players to ever come out of the state of Oklahoma with her USA Basketball accolades and her NCAA Tournament appearances with the Longhorns. Unfortunately, she was injured last December and has yet to get on the floor for Texas this season.

Stay tuned for a look at other previous classes coming soon!