The No. 1 player in the 2025 class, Aaliyah Chavez, committed to the Oklahoma Sooners. Chavez finished her high school career with a total of 4,796 points and led Lubbock Monterey to its first-ever state title.
She is a five-star point guard from Lubbock, Texas. Chavez was announced 2025 Gatorade National Player of the Year and McDonald All-American.
Chavez secured her bag as the #1 option. Instead of choosing a traditional powerhouse women’s basketball program, she has the opportunity to help build Oklahoma up — just like Aces center A’ja Wilson did at South Carolina, Fever’s point guard Caitlin Clark did at Iowa, and guard Juju Watkins is doing at USC.
She deserves props for taking the time to analyze the decision and set herself up well for the future. If she can command a $1.5M payday and find a school to pay her that, more power to her. Maybe it will pave the way for future players to get massive paydays and more exposure and growth for the sport.
This is great for women’s basketball. #1 recruits so often follow the standard blueprint of playing for UConn, but we’re seeing more players carve their own path at relatively unproven programs, and it’s resulted in growing the sport tremendously and making the game more competitive and exciting.
Dragging this out to go to Oklahoma is kind of crazy. Many assumed she would have either stayed home to play at Texas Tech or gone to USC, South Carolina, or UCLA. But good for her, the Sooners have a very solid program, and she has the skills to get them some media attention and over that mediocre hump.
The Sooners are loaded with center Raegan Beers, guard Payton Verhulst, and forwards Saraha Williams and Skylar Vann coming back. Forward Caya Smith did not play much, but she was a top-50 recruit. Keziah Lofton is a top 50 recruit in this class, and she will get good minutes next year too. Should be a Final Four roster with Chavez added to the mix.
Oklahoma has a style of offense that fits Chavez’s play style better than all those other schools. At South Carolina she might be coming off the bench like all the freshmen, USC does not make a ton of sense with Juju though it might have been a fun experiment.
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