Oklahoma's Board of Regents approved a slight pay increase for Sooners basketball coach Porter Moser, as well as contract extensions for assistant coaches Ryan Humphrey, Armon Gates and Clay Custer.
Tom Green
ARDMORE — Oklahoma's Board of Regents on Friday approved a slight raise for Sooners man's basketball coach Porter Moser.
Moser will earn $3.2 million for the upcoming season, making for a $100,000 raise from what he made during the 2023-24 season, which represented his third as OU's coach. Moser will receive an additional $100,000 raise on July 1, 2025, and each subsequent July 1 for the duration of his contract, which currently runs through the 2027-28 basketball season.Moser is 54-45 in three seasons as OU's head coach.
"We thought, given what our team accomplished this year, it was definitely important to show Coach Moser that we appreciate him and what he's providing in leadership," Oklahoma athletics director Joe Castiglione Jr. said.
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Moser, entering his fourth year as Oklahoma's coach, was not the only men's basketball staff member to have a raise approved by the Board of Regents on Friday. Assistant coaches Ryan Humphrey,Armon GatesClay Custerall received one-year extensions through the 2024-25 season, a notable development considering the staff turnover Moser endured during his first two seasons at Oklahoma.
Humphrey, entering his third year on Moser's staff, received an extension through June 30, 2025. He will earn a total of $466,000 for the upcoming season, including a base salary of $260,000 and outside income worth $206,000. That represents a $16,000 increase over what Humphrey made during the 2023-24 season, with a $10,000 base salary raise and an additional $6,000 coming from outside income.
Gates joined Moser's staff at Oklahoma last April after previously serving as an assistant at Oregon the year prior. Gates received an extension through June 30, 2025, and will earn $414,000 in total compensation for the upcoming season. That includes $260,000 in base salary and an additional $154,000 in outside income. It comes to an overall raise of $14,000 for Gates, who previously worked with Moser on his staff at Loyola-Chicago from 2011-13.
Custer, who has been on Moser's staff since he took over as Oklahoma's coach prior to the 2021-22 season, received a $10,000 increase in base salary (from $250,000 to $260,000) on top of his annual outside income of $25,000. He will earn $285,000 for the upcoming season.
The extensions of Humphrey, Gates and Custer provides Oklahoma's coaching staff with some needed stability as the program heads into its first season in the SEC. The Sooners are coming off a 20-12 season — the program's first 20-win regular season since the 2015-16 campaign—but narrowly missed out on the NCAA Tournament as the first team out of the field, as chosen by the selection committee.
"You look at the tough schedule that they played, and you look at the number of wins they had against the tough schedule, it was a tournament-level team and a tournament profile," Castiglione said. "But the so-called bid-stealers were more numerous than anybody could ever remember. When we had that tough half of February and March with the injuries and had a couple of games that just weren't able to close out, otherwise we're probably not just in the tournament but well into the field of having a higher seed. Look, we're not excuse-makers. It happens. I'm just explaining."
Since that postseason snub, OU's roster has undergone an overhaul. The Sooners lost a trio of seniors — Rivaldo Soares, Le'Tre Darthard and Maks Klanjscek—while five other players departed via the transfer portal: starting guards Milos Uzan (Houston) and Javian McCollum (Georgia Tech), wing Otega Oweh (Kentucky), backup center John Hugley (Xavier) and freshman reserve Kaden Cooper (still in the portal). Moser and his staff worked to restock the roster, bringing in a group of six transfers along with two 2024 signees.
The Sooners added former High Point guard Duke Miles, former Long Beach State guard/wing Jadon Jones, former Fairfield guard Brycen Goodine, former Dayton guard Kobe Elvis, former Alabama center Mohamed Wague and wing Jeff Nwankwo, the No. 2 junior college prospect in the country. That's on top of the additions of four-star forward Kuol Atak and three-star guard Dayton Forsythe in the 2024 high school class, as Moser aims to return Oklahoma to the NCAA Tournament for the first time since the 2020-21 season.
"Of course, we were disappointed not getting into the NCAA Tournament, but it took many anomalies that have not been seen in the day leading up to the NCAA Tournament to keep us out," Castiglione said. "We've been either the first team out or amongst the first teams out two of the last three years, and so as disappointed as we are, we are not shying away from the expectation or our goal of getting in the tournament, and once getting in the tournament, being successful. (Moser) wants that. He embraces that, and nobody was more disappointed than the team…. We're not going to change our goals. We're not going to change our expectation of being in the tournament, but it just felt like it was the right thing to do to show him and his assistants that we really appreciate the hard work they're putting into the program, the way they're growing the program itself, and how hard he works externally. Nobody goes around and tries to build interest like he does."
