During last April’s bigTime Shootout high school basketball tournament, one player caught the eyes of Kansas University coach Roy Williams and Oklahoma State’s Eddie Sutton.

“The guy was dunking on everybody,” said Greg Swaim, a recruiting guru and director of the bigTime Shootouts, which serve as meat markets for potential college prospects to get noticed by college coaches. “Coach Sutton and coach Williams came up to me and said, ‘Who is this kid?’ He really came onto the scene then. He just exploded.”

The kid was J.R. Giddens, a 6-foot-5 guard from Yukon, Okla., who on Sunday confirmed he had given Williams an oral commitment to join the Jayhawks’ 2002-03 recruiting class.

Giddens, a junior at Oklahoma City’s John Marshall High, averaged 25.0 points and 7.2 rebounds a game last season. He and fellow KU commit Jeremy Case a 6-1, 160-pound guard from McAlester (Okla.) High are considered the top two juniors in the Sooner State.

Naturally, some fans aren’t too happy to see the state’s best and brightest leaving Red Clay Country.

“Yeah, there is some of that grumbling,” said Albert Johnson, a coach on Giddens’ and Case’s AAU team, Athletes First of Oklahoma City. “But Kansas got a jump on them early. They built a relationship with them early and showed how they feel about them.”

The Oklahomans committed to KU within two days of each other. Case committed on Friday.

Though they might be inextricably linked throughout their Kansas careers because of their familiarity and hometown proximity not altogether unlike the current KU duo of Kirk Hinrich and Nick Collison, who both are from Iowa they’re not the same player.

“Jeremy’s a pure shooter,” said Johnson, who also serves as assistant coach at Giddens’ Marshall High. “He’s 6-1, 160. J.R. is 6-5, close to 200. He’s a great shooter, too, and a tremendous athlete. He’s very explosive. He’s a shooting guard, but he could play small forward. He’s probably got two, three more inches in him. They just complement each other so well.”

As if to prove the point, Case had a compliment for his soon-to-be college teammate.

“He is pretty much an all-around player,” Case said. “He’s 6-5 and can really jump, shoot it a little and dribble. He’s good.”

Giddens is good at a lot of things. A 55-percent field-goal shooter and 48-percent three-point bomber, Giddens also is one of the top track and field athletes in Oklahoma. His specialty is the high jump; his personal best is 6-feet, 10-inches.

“His coaches think he can get 7-feet,” said Giddens’ mother, Dianna. “We’ve seen him jump 7-feet when he’s jumping at 6-10. If he spent more time at it, the coaches think he could add some inches, but he plays so much basketball, we haven’t really look into it. I think he’ll definitely participate in track (at KU). He was a runner, too. The kid has trophies in everything he participates in.”

Case and Giddens would take two of the five scholarships KU will have available for the 2002-03 class. Oral commitments are nonbinding.

“But I’m a man of my word,” Giddens said. “I’ve made up my mind. I’ve just always wanted to go to Kansas. There’s no use of trying to give other people a chance. That’s where my mind is.”