Oklahoma Basketball: Numbers You Need to Know: No. 11 Kristian Doolittle

Among the newcomers to the 2016-17 Oklahoma basketball team and someone Sooner fans will be seeing a lot of and expecting much from the next several years is Kristian Doolittle.

Doolittle, who wears the No. 11 jersey – the same number, incidentally that Isaiah Cousins wore for the Sooners – is a 6-foot, 7-inch forward who hails from the same local high school, Edmond Memorial, as OU senior point guard Jordan Woodard.

ESPN ranked Doolittle as the No. 69 player overall in the 2016 recruiting class. He was a teammate of Woodward his sophomore season at Edmond Memorial and helped lead his team to the Class 6A state championship that season.

Doolittle has played in all nine of the OU basketball games this season, starting in five of them. He is averaging 8.3 points, five rebounds and 22 minutes a game. His two best games have been against Northern Colorado two weeks ago, when he tallied a season-high 17 points, and a 13-point performance in a losing effort against Northern Iowa, one of the Sooners three losses on the season.

Head coach Lon Kruger likes what he has seen so far from his young freshman forward, and he knows he is only going to get better with time.

“He’ll get more comfortable as we go,” Kruger said of Doolittle after the Northern Iowa game. “He’ got such a good skill set and good feel for the game. He’ll make a ton of progress with every game.”

“It’s been an eye-opener,” Doolittle told Ryan Aber of the Oklahoma City Oklahoman. Actually playing basketball now rather than watching college basketball, it’s a lot different.”