OU women's basketball: Putnam West's Caya Smith commits to Sooners' 2024 recruiting class

When Caya Smith announced her decision to play basketball at the University of Oklahoma, she wasn’t the only person wearing Sooner apparel.

Her father, Tommy Smith, revealed an OU T-shirt under his jacket. Her brothers unveiled their Sooners gear, too. Then Smith lifted her toddler nephew, Avi, who sported a crimson shirt with his tiny puffer coat.

Family members surrounded Smith during her signing ceremony Friday afternoon at Putnam West, and all of those people played a major role in her choice.

“Very important,” Smith said of their presence. “It means a lot to me.”

The Sooners' women's basketball program added another nationally ranked recruit to its class of 2024 in Smith, a four-star senior wing.

At 5-foot-11, Smith is No. 70 in the espnW HoopGurlz national rankings for the class of 2024. She joins Bethany senior Zya Vann, a Sooner commit who checks in at No. 46 in the HoopGurlz standings.

Smith, also a long jump state champion, made The Oklahoman’s Super 5 girls basketball third team and the Big All-City first team during the past season. She averaged 13.2 points, 4.3 rebounds and 3.6 steals per game as Putnam West reached the Class 6A state semifinals.

Despite her growing spotlight, Smith stayed private through most of her recruiting process. She didn’t make social media posts indicating where she might go, and with offers pouring in from across the country, her decision was a mystery heading into Friday.

More: Where are Oklahoma high school athletes going to college? Here's the 2024 signing list

“The recruiting process was so heavy that she didn’t want to give no indication,” said Tommy Smith, a former coach at Oklahoma City University and Langston. “Not even me until the last moment because she knew I would tell everybody.”

The decorations at her ceremony provided clues before she made her announcement. Red and white balloons adorned each side of the table, standing out from the blue-and-yellow color scheme of Putnam West’s gym.

After her announcement, the Smiths took the OU flair to the next level. They lined up framed photographs of Smith in an OU jersey and uncovered a cake dressed up in crimson-and-cream icing as the sound of “Boomer Sooner” filled the gym.

Erica Smith, her mother, said she’s excited her daughter chose “home, sweet home.”

Caya Smith had offers from programs that included Kentucky, Houston, Texas Tech and Navy, but the short distance from home set OU apart from the rest.

She already knows Vann and Keziah Lofton, a junior OU commit from Bethany. Sooner coach Jennie Barancyzyk influenced Smith’s decision, too.

“She made me feel like I was at home, that I should stay at home (and) represent my home,” Smith said.

With guidance from her future coach and family, Smith knew what to do. She said she was more nervous than she expected to be at the signing ceremony, but the crowd immediately greeted her with cheers and applause as she proclaimed she was staying home.

“(My family is) always telling me (to) do what I feel is right,” Smith said. “So that’s what I did.”

This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: OU basketball adds Putnam West's Caya Smith to 2024 recruiting class