Power Ranking the Last 10 College Basketball Players of the Year
There have been some outstanding Wooden Award winners over the past decade, but Kentucky's Anthony Davis tops our ranking of those 10 stars.
It's impossible to disregard the NBA careers (or lack thereof) these 10 players have had, but it simply wouldn't be fair to judge them based on what they did after leaving school. Kevin Durant has played nine NBA seasons. while Buddy Hield is still a week away from appearing in his first professional regular-season game.
Instead, the ranking criteria is based solely on what they did in college.
Let's pretend we could go back and cryogenically freeze each Wooden Award winner on the day he won the award and thaw them all out today with one year of college eligibility remaining. If you could pick just one player from that list to build your team around today, who would it be?
That was the question we repeatedly asked in ranking these 10 studs of yesteryear.
10. Doug McDermott, Creighton (2014)
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Stats: 26.7 PPG, 7.0 RPG, 1.6 APG, 44.9% 3PT, 7.7 win shares
Doug McDermott—aka Dougie McBuckets—was an offensive juggernaut. A 6'8" career 45.8 percent three-point shooter who could also destroy opponents in the paint, he was the most unguardable player in recent memory. It got to the point where we had to wonder if he was nursing some kind of injury on the off chance he didn't score at least 20 points in a game.
He finished his time at Creighton with 3,150 points, ranking fifth on the all-time list of points scored in a collegiate career.
But McDermott was a total liability on the defensive end.
According to Sports-Reference.com, he posted a negative defensive box plus/minus in each of his four seasons. He had a combined total of 13 steals and blocks as a senior and finished his career with 34 steals and 14 blocks in 4,569 minutes played. To put those numbers in context, there were five players last season who had at least that many steals and blocks in fewer than 675 minutes of action.
Simply put, McDermott was a big reason Creighton ranked top five in adjusted offensive efficiency for three straight seasons and an equally influential part in the Bluejays posting an average adjusted defensive efficiency rank of 122.0 in those three years.
He was amazing to watch with the ball in his hands, but the cost of watching him try to defend an opposing ball-handler is enough for him to rank last among the past 10 Wooden Award winners.
9. Buddy Hield, Oklahoma (2016)
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Stats: 25.0 PPG, 5.7 RPG, 2.0 APG, 1.1 SPG, 45.7% 3PT, 7.6 win shares
Now that we've had more than six months for it to digest and become a thing of the past, we can probably all agree 2015-16 was the most mediocre college basketball season in many moons.
After several consecutive years of teams chasing perfection into the latter half of March, no team even finished this past season with fewer than five losses. Hype surrounding the nation's top freshmen went up in flames as Skal Labissiere amounted to little at Kentucky, while Ben Simmons' ridiculous stat line couldn't even get LSU into the NCAA tournament. Up until Marcus Paige and Kris Jenkins exchanged unforgettable shots in the national championship game, there was hardly anything worth remembering from the entire season.
Buddy Hield was one of the exceptions to that rule, thanks in part to his 46-point game in the triple-overtime epic between Oklahoma and Kansas. It was one of 12 times he scored at least 30 points as a senior, putting an emphatic capstone on his transformation from a freshman point guard who couldn't hit the broad side of a barn.
However, Hield wasn't even the unanimous Player of the Year in a season that was desperately lacking for star power. Had Michigan State's Denzel Valentine not missed four games and struggled for a few more following arthroscopic surgery on his knee, he probably would have been the 2016 Wooden Award recipient.
Hield at least played more defense than Doug McDermott ever did, but it's impossible to argue for him as the best player of the past decade when we couldn't even agree he was the best player of the past season.
8. Evan Turner, Ohio State (2010)
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Stats: 20.4 PPG, 9.2 RPG, 6.0 APG, 36.4% 3PT, 6.8 win shares
We've been spoiled in recent years by guys like Kyle Collinsworth and Denzel Valentine, but there was a time not so long ago when flirting with a triple-double on a nightly basis was almost unfathomable.
Eight players in the past three seasons averaged at least 12.0 points, 5.5 assists and 5.5 rebounds per game. Collinsworth and Valentine both went for at least 15.0, 7.0 and 7.0 last year, taking advantage of the new rule changes to become the first players in at least two decades to hit those marks.
But between 2008-09 and 2010-11, Ohio State's Evan Turner was the only player to fit the above descriptions, routinely posting ridiculous box scores at a time when pace of play and scoring (in) efficiency made such performances nearly impossible.
Turner had a triple-double in just 30 minutes of action in the season opener against Alcorn State and added a second one against Lipscomb by the end of November. Those were his only triple-doubles of the season, but he did have 15 other points-rebounds double-doubles, tallying at least six assists in 10 of those.
Moreover, Turner helped right the ship for the Buckeyes. After losing five of the six leading scorers from the 2006-07 team that reached the national championship game, they sputtered to a couple of 10-8 B1G seasons before Turner carried them to a 2010 conference title. They also had William Buford, Jon Diebler and David Lighty, but Turner was the undisputed leader of the pack and a nightly marvel to behold.
And he carried that team with a literal broken back. He missed six games after fracturing two lumbar vertebrae, during which time the Buckeyes went 3-3 and dropped out of the Top 25. After his return, they went 17-3 en route to a No. 2 seed in the 2010 NCAA tournament.
We have to nitpick at these elite players, though, and Turner's 4.4 turnovers per game are hard to ignore. He even had two games with at least 10 turnovers, frequently trying to do too much. Because of that propensity to give the ball away, there are other players we'd rather build our team around.
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7. Jimmer Fredette, BYU (2011)
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Stats: 28.9 PPG, 4.3 APG, 3.4 RPG, 1.3 SPG, 39.6% 3PT, 8.5 win shares
Jimmer Mania was one of the greatest single-season, individual-player rides in any sport in my lifetime.
Tom Brady's 50-touchdown season in 2007 was unbelievable, as was Barry Bonds' 73-homer campaign in 2001; but Jimmer Fredette scoring 1,068 points while shooting every time he got an inch of space within 30 feet of the hoop was unreal. It was college basketball's version of what Stephen Curry did last year in the NBA.
It's a fitting comparison, since Fredette and Curry are the only players in the past 14 years to average at least 28.5 points per game for a season. Each one averaged more than 20 field-goal attempts and more than seven free-throw attempts per game, as both head coaches just sat back and let their stars go to work.
Where they differed, though, is that Fredette did his damage for a No. 3 seed in the NCAA tournament that went 32-5, while Curry's most prolific scoring season merely netted Davidson a 27-8 record and no trip to the Big Dance. We've seen plenty of players put up big numbers for lackluster teams, but for Fredette to jack up that many shots as part of that many wins puts him in rarefied air.
And while other high-volume scorers tend to wear down as the season progresses, Fredette only got stronger, averaging 32.3 points over his final 20 games. During that stretch, he had four games with at least 42 points, including a ludicrous 52-point game in a conference-tournament win over a New Mexico team that had beaten BYU twice during the regular season.
Dude got buckets. That's what we're trying to say here.
Like Evan Turner, he committed his fair share of turnovers (3.5 per game). And like Doug McDermott, Fredette wasn't exactly renowned for his defense (minus-0.7 defensive box plus/minus). However, it has been five years since he was last relevant, but "Jimmer Range" is still a thing in pick-up basketball games. That lasting impact on the sport cannot be ignored.
6. Frank Kaminsky, Wisconsin (2015)
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Stats: 18.8 PPG, 8.2 RPG, 2.6 APG, 1.5 BPG, 41.6% 3PT, 9.8 win shares
Most of these players arrived on campus ready to shine. It took a bit of a warm-up year for Buddy Hield, Jimmer Fredette and Evan Turner to hit their stride, but the talent was clearly there as they made significant contributions as freshmen.
Then there's Frank Kaminsky.
A 3-star recruit whose next-best offer came from Northwestern, Frank the Tank barely touched the court for his first two seasons at Wisconsin, accounting for just 196 points in his first 67 games. Though he finally broke into the starting lineup, the beginning of year three wasn't much better, scoring just 10 points in his first two games.
Then the magic began. Kaminsky dropped 43 points on North Dakota in November 2013, including draining all six of his three-point attempts, sparking Yahoo Sport's Jeff Eisenberg (among many others) to write about the "unlikely outburst." Out of nowhere, Kaminsky became the star for a Final Four team before entering his senior year as one of the favorites for the Wooden Award.
Obviously, he did not disappoint. It was a heated season-long battle between Kaminsky and Duke's Jahlil Okafor, but the 7-footer with three-point range edged out the freshman for the individual honor.
We've seen other centers routinely venture beyond the arc for buckets—most notably Kevin Pittsnogle, Isaiah Austin and Adreian Payne—but none have made quite the overall impact Kaminsky made in his final season. Throw in the fact he was quite possibly the goofiest dude to ever become a star and Frank the Tank will forever be a fan favorite.
However, if you're starting your team with a big man, you're going with Anthony Davis or Blake Griffin, so Kaminsky wasn't quite good enough to sneak into our top five.
5. Trey Burke, Michigan (2013)
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Stats: 18.6 PPG, 6.7 APG, 3.2 RPG, 1.6 SPG, 38.4% 3PT, 8.7 win shares
There has been a rumor floating around for the past few years that big men are a dying breed in modern basketball, but Trey Burke is the only true point guard* to win the Wooden Award since Jameer Nelson in 2004.
Say what you will about Tommy Amaker, John Beilein and/or Mitch McGary, but Burke was the person most responsible for putting Michigan back on the college basketball map. When he arrived on campus, it had been more than a decade since the Wolverines were ranked in the Top 10 and nearly 20 years since their last trip to the Sweet 16.
Burke became the top scorer, defender and passer as Michigan earned consecutive No. 4 seeds, spent one week at No. 1 in the AP Top 25 poll and advanced to the 2013 national championship game. He was the Energizer Bunny of point guards, tallying at least 15 points and five assists in 27 of Michigan's 39 games as a sophomore and averaging better than 3.0 assists per turnover.
Our favorite Burke stat, though, is that the 6'0" guard blocked 20 shots that year. It's one thing to have great court vision at point guard, but it takes a special strain of intuitiveness to block better than one shot every other game when one is almost always the smallest guy on the floor.
But the competition is mighty stiff in the top five on this list. Though he's arguably neck-and-neck with Kemba Walker for the title of best point/combo guard of the past decade and easily our first pick among the guards available, Burke wasn't quite the unstoppable force of nature that our top four guys were.
*Jimmer Fredette was technically BYU's point guard, but when you score more points in a season than any other player since 1990, you're just a shooting guard who handles the ball a lot.
4. Tyler Hansbrough, North Carolina (2008)
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Stats: 22.6 PPG, 10.2 RPG, 1.5 SPG, 304-of-377 (80.6%) FT, 8.7 win shares
It has now been more than 10 years since J.J. Redick and Adam Morrison last played college basketball, officially making Tyler Hansbrough the most polarizing player of the past decade.
It was impossible to follow the sport and remain neutral on Psycho T. Either you loved his passion and his guard-like scrappiness trapped in a power forward's body or it brought you great joy when Gerald Henderson delivered a flying elbow to Hansbrough's flopped-on-every-shot face.
Love him or hate him, Hansbrough was a consensus All-American for all four of his seasons, winning the Wooden Award as a junior and finishing second to Blake Griffin as a senior. He played in three Elite Eights, two Final Fours and won a national championship.
He was kind of a big deal.
But he wasn't quite as singularly dominant as our top three guys. Some percentage of Hansbrough's success has to be attributed to Ty Lawson, Wayne Ellington and Danny Green, who were so dangerous as guards, opposing teams had to try their luck against Hansbrough in one-on-one situations, where they almost always lost.
As far as head fakes and hustle are concerned, though, Hansbrough was second to none. He never did amount to much in the NBA, but he will be remembered as one of the greats of college basketball for the rest of his life.
3. Kevin Durant, Texas (2007)
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Stats: 25.8 PPG, 11.1 RPG, 1.9 BPG, 1.9 SPG, 1.3 APG, 40.4% 3PT, 8.8 win shares
At this point, you can't go wrong. The decision just depends on your personal preference in style of player, as each of our top three guys was undeniably dominant in his own way.
Kevin Durant was a once-in-a-blue-moon type of versatile phenom. He's one of just two players in the past 23 years to record at least 75 made three-pointers, 300 rebounds and 25 blocks in the same season. The other was Glenn "Big Dog" Robinson, who averaged 30.3 points per game during the 1993-94 season for Purdue.
When you're alone on a list with that guy, you did something right.
We now have nine seasons' worth of evidence in the NBA to show that Durant is pretty darn good and one of the most unstoppable scorers on the planet, but that was obvious long before he became "The Durantula."
He began his collegiate career with seven consecutive games of at least 20 points, tallying at least 10 points in every game he played for the Longhorns. He drove to contact, finished at the rim and repeatedly made opponents pay for not putting a big enough defender on him on the perimeter.
Led in scoring by six freshmen and two sophomores, Texas had the country's youngest roster that season. Only 2013-14 Kentucky has made the NCAA tournament with a younger roster in the past decade. But the Longhorns never seemed inexperienced with Durant leading the way.
2. Blake Griffin, Oklahoma (2009)
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Stats: 22.7 PPG, 14.4 RPG, 2.3 APG, 1.2 BPG, 1.1 SPG, 9.7 win shares
Blake Griffin has always been fun to watch for his ability to rise up for a mind-blowing slam dunk, but he was also the king of double-doubles as a sophomore at Oklahoma.
He had at least 10 points and 10 rebounds in 30 of his 35 games in 2008-09, but he usually did much more than the bare minimum. In fact, he had 18 games with at least 15 points and 15 rebounds and three with at least 25 points and 21 rebounds.
In the past six years, there have only been 15 instances of a player recording at least 25 points and 21 rebounds in the same game, and no instances of a player doing so twice in the same season. For Griffin to do it three times in one season—twice in consecutive games—is almost comical.
Not surprisingly, Griffin led the nation in total rebounds and ranked second in field-goal percentage, making more than 65 percent of his shots. Thanks to that shooting high percentage and a ton of free-throw attempts earned by his physical play, Griffin averaged 1.73 points per field-goal attempt for the season.
(That isn't a ratio you'll find on any site, but most elite shooters tend to be in the 1.45-1.55 range—it's where Buddy Hield, Doug McDermott and J.J. Redick all landed as seniors. Even Tyler Hansbrough's best season in that metric was only 1.65, despite setting records in made free throws. It's almost impossible to be that efficient as a volume scorer, but Griffin found a way.)
Had he made just a little bit more of an impact on the defensive end, Griffin would have been our No. 1 pick. However, we couldn't rationalize going with a double-double machine with such a dominant two-way player as an option.
1. Anthony Davis, Kentucky (2012)
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Stats: 14.2 PPG, 10.4 RPG, 4.7 BPG, 1.4 SPG, 1.3 APG, 10.0 win shares
Most of these players were the singular go-to offensive weapon on their respective teams. Guys like Jimmer Fredette, Doug McDermott, Kevin Durant and Buddy Hield didn't average 25 or more points per game by accident. They each took a ton of shots, averaging a minimum of 16 field-goal attempts per game.
Anthony Davis, on the other hand, was one of six Wildcats to attempt between 300-370 shots during the 2011-12 season. Though he made 65.3 percent of his two-point attempts, Davis only averaged 8.4 shots per game.
Yet, he led the team in points and rebounds while serving as arguably the most dominant shot-blocker of at least the past decade.
No one impacted the game on both ends of the floor quite like Davis. Sports-Reference.com began tracking box plus/minus in 2010-11, and during those six seasons, only seven players have posted a total plus/minus of 15.0 or better. At 18.7, Davis is the highest of the bunch, leading Karl-Anthony Towns in second place by a margin of 1.4. What that means is that Davis' value on a per-possession basis was nearly 10 percent greater than any other player who has stepped on the court in the past six years.
It's a shame we can't use that statistic to compare his value to that of Blake Griffin or Kevin Durant, but Davis led his team to the national championship, while neither Griffin nor Durant reached the Final Four. Chalk that up to supporting casts if you so choose, but Davis was equal parts unstoppable and impenetrable, regardless of the opponent; a man-child of a predator, toying with his food before he devoured it.
All 10 of these guys would be outstanding options as starting points for building a college basketball team, but we're going with Davis as our No. 1 pick because he was the best player on both offense and defense.
Stats are courtesy of KenPom.com and Sports-Reference.com. Recruiting information is courtesy of Scout.com.
Kerry Miller covers college basketball for Bleacher Report. You can follow him on Twitter @kerrancejames.
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