Predicting the Top Mid-Major Stars for the 2015-16 College Basketball Season
With more than 350 teams playing college basketball at the Division I level, plenty of standout athletes manage to excel in relative anonymity. It's not until potentially making a splash in the NCAA tournament, or possibly early in the season in a one-off game against an elite opponent, do the stars from the non-power conferences get any notoriety.
It wasn't until this past March that most people had heard of Eastern Washington's Tyler Harvey, or the Georgia State duo of R.J. Hunter and Ryan Harrow. Even fewer were aware of 7'6" Mamadou Ndiaye of UC Irvine until he nearly led the Anteaters to an upset of Louisville.
It's almost like they don't exist until they do something on the big stage, when in reality they've been playing like that all along.
These are the mid-major stars, the guys who weren't 5-, 4- or even 3-star recruits coming out of high school or who maybe had to head to junior college before latching on with a lower-level D-I program. But just because they lack star power doesn't make their game shine any less.
Who will be this year's mid-major stars? Click through to see our predictions (listed alphabetically) for the best players outside of the power conferences.
D.J. Balentine, Evansville
1 of 19
Year: Senior
Position: Guard
Height, weight: 6'2", 210 lbs
D.J. Balentine has averaged better than 20 points per game each of the past two seasons, going for 20.1 per contest in 2014-15 in leading Evansville to the CollegeInsider.com Tournament title. Balentine was MVP of the 32-team event, scoring 16 points in the championship game against Northern Arizona.
A 39 percent three-point shooter for his career, Balentine needs 234 points to reach 2,000. He had four 30-point games as a junior, and he figures to be in position for several more this season as the Aces return their top seven players from last year's 24-12 team.
Evansville gets a shot to showcase Balentine and the rest of its lineup during the Wooden Legacy in California in November, an eight-team tourney that includes Arizona, Boston College, Michigan State and Providence.
Roderick Bobbitt, Hawaii
2 of 19
Year: Senior
Position: Guard
Height, weight: 6'3", 205 lbs
Hawaii had a tumultuous 2014-15 season that began with its coach getting fired just before play began and ended with a surprise run to the Big West Conference final before losing to UC Irvine. In between, Roderick Bobbitt recorded more steals than any other player in the country.
The junior college transfer from California had 100 swipes in 35 games, finishing third nationally in steals per game at 2.9.
Bobbitt also chipped in 8.9 points, 3.4 rebounds and 5.3 assists for Hawaii, registering a triple-double in a November win over Hawaii-Hilo.
Craig Bradshaw, Belmont
3 of 19
Year: Senior
Position: Guard
Height, weight: 6'3", 210 lbs
With at least 20 wins in nine of the past 10 seasons, Belmont has risen to the ranks of being one of the most consistent mid-major programs in the country and one that's always capable of pulling off an upset early in the season or in March. The Bruins nearly knocked off second-seeded Virginia in this past NCAA tournament, and players like Craig Bradshaw are the reason why.
Bradshaw, Belmont's leading scorer at 18.3 points per game, had 25 against one of the toughest defenses in the country. He made 10 of his 19 shots from the field, including five three-pointers—a game after upsetting Murray State (with another 25-point, five-trey performance) to win the Ohio Valley Conference tourney the week before.
A 49.1 percent shooter for the year, Bradshaw hit on 42.3 percent of threes for the season.
.png?w=256 "NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament Championship")
John Brown, High Point
4 of 19
Year: Junior
Position: Forward
Height, weight: 6'8", 205 lbs
Player efficiency rating (PER) is one of the new advanced statistical metrics that has become trendy to use when evaluating players, especially those who contribute in multiple ways but might not be among the best in any single category. It's also a stat that shows how valuable John Brown has been to High Point in his career.
Last season, Brown had a PER of 31.6, which ranked fourth in the country and a smidge ahead of potential No. 1 NBA draft pick Karl-Anthony Towns.
Brown averaged 19.3 points and 6.0 rebounds while shooting 55 percent for the Panthers, who won 23 games last season—their most wins since reaching the 1996 Division II semifinals. High Point has won the Big South's regular-season title all three years that Brown has been in action.
Adrian Diaz, Florida International
5 of 19
Year: Senior
Position: Forward
Height, weight: 6'11", 230 lbs
Adrian Diaz played in 49 games over two seasons for Kansas State from 2011-13, but he averaged only nine minutes and struggled to crack the Wildcats rotation. That was more than enough motivation for the Miami native to return to southern Florida, and after sitting out the 2013-14 season, he was able to show off his true worth last year for Florida International.
Diaz ranked seventh in the country in blocks per game at 3.0, while averaging 13 points and 6.9 rebounds on 60.3 percent shooting.
The Golden Panthers finished with a losing record, but Diaz made his mark near the end of the season with the program's first-ever triple-double in a win over eventual Conference USA tournament champion UAB. He had 14 points, 12 rebounds and 13 blocks—one of eight games in which he blocked at least five shots.
A.J. English, Iona
6 of 19
Year: Senior
Position: Guard
Height, weight: 6'4", 190 lbs
Though he hasn't been able to get Iona back to the NCAA tournament (as it did during his injury-shortened freshman year), A.J. English is unquestionably one of the big-impact guys at the mid-major level.
"A.J. has probably been our best player in terms of making big shots since I've been at Iona," coach Tim Cluess said in February, per Josh Thomson of the Journal News.
Last year, he poured in 20.1 points, 5.1 rebounds and 5.1 assists per game with 106 three-pointers for the Gaels, getting them a second straight Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference regular-season title. They fell to rival Manhattan in the conference final and then were eliminated by Rhode Island in the first round of the NIT.
English, the son of former NBA player A.J. English, was considered a potential candidate to turn pro after his junior year. Instead, he's coming back for a final season but will be without big man David Laury, who averaged 19.8 points and 9.7 rebounds in 2014-15.
Nick Faust, Long Beach State
7 of 19
Year: Senior
Position: Guard
Height, weight: 6'6", 210 lbs
Had Nick Faust stuck around at Maryland last season, he could have been a part of a big year for the Terrapins, as they finished second in the Big Ten and spent most of the season ranked. Or he could have been unhappy with his status in the program, which is what led him to transfer to Long Beach State and sit out 2014-15.
Now Faust gets to show it was worth it to spend a year out of action, contributing to a mid-major that has become a haven for transfers from power teams. Long Beach's roster last season included players who had previously played at UCLA and USC, and for 2015-16, the 49ers also picked up high-scoring Loyola Marymount guard Evan Payne.
Payne can't play this season, but Faust can. When last eligible, Faust averaged 8.9 points and 4.0 rebounds in 27.7 minutes per game for Maryland in 2013-14.
Kahlil Felder, Oakland
8 of 19
Year: Junior
Position: Guard
Height, weight: 5'9", 176 lbs
Only four players in Division I played as many or more minutes per game than Oakland's Kahlil Felder in 2014-15, who averaged 38.5 minutes and played at least 40 in 13 of the Golden Grizzlies' 33 games. And they weren't empty minutes, either, as he led the team in scoring (18.8) and his 7.6 assists per game were second-best in the country.
A Detroit native, Felder was the Horizon League's Freshman of the Year in 2013-14 and then made the all-conference team this past season. He had seven games with at least 10 assists, including a 23-point, 10-assist effort in a loss to Iowa State, and 37 points with 11 assists and eight rebounds in Oakland's season-ending loss to Eastern Illinois in the CollegeInsider.com Tournament.
Je'lon Hornbeak, Monmouth
9 of 19
Year: Junior
Position: Guard
Height, weight: 6'3", 190 lbs
A reduced role, albeit for a team that would reach the NCAA tournament, wasn't what Je'lon Hornbeak had in mind at Oklahoma for his sophomore year. So after that season ended, Hornbeak didn't stick around to see what things would be like as a junior.
He ended up at Monmouth, a Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference program that last reached the NCAA tourney in 2006 and where Hornbeak could be the missing piece needed to get the Hawks back to the Big Dance.
He averaged 5.6 points per game as a sophomore and reserve, a year after starting nearly every game for the Sooners in 2012-13.
Venky Jois, Eastern Washington
10 of 19
Year: Senior
Position: Forward
Height, weight: 6'8", 230 lbs
If Tyler Harvey was the star attraction, Venky Jois was a heck of a supporting player for Eastern Washington. And in many games, he was just as important (if not more so) as the nation's leading scorer, who turned pro after his sophomore year.
The Australian-born Jois was one of the top field-goal shooters in the nation last year, making 61.1 percent of his attempts while averaging 16.7 points and 7.7 rebounds. He also chipped in 2.2 blocks per game, both controlling and defending the paint for the Eagles, who had a breakout season that included an upset win at Indiana and a trip to the NCAA tournament.
Jois' 184 career blocks are nearly twice as much as the previous record holder at Eastern Washington. He had five blocks along with 20 points and 14 rebounds in that win at Indiana.
Damon Lynn, NJIT
11 of 19
Year: Junior
Position: Guard
Height, weight: 5'11", 165 lbs
Look out, Atlantic Sun. By inviting NJIT to join the conference for 2015-16, that means also exposing the rest of the league to one of the quickest triggers in the game.
Damon Lynn took 350 three-pointers last season for the Highlanders—43 more than any other player in Division I. He made 126 of them, second to national scoring leader Tyler Harvey of Eastern Washington, while averaging a team-best 17.5 points per game.
Lynn had 20 points in the game that put NJIT on the map last season—a shocking win at Michigan. In the CollegeInsider.com Tournament, he averaged 19.5 points in four games as the Highlanders reached the semifinals.
Mamadou Ndiaye, UC Irvine
12 of 19
Year: Junior
Position: Center
Height, weight: 7'6", 300 lbs
Mamadou Ndiaye is no longer just the Big West's little (big) secret, not after he and UC Irvine nearly knocked off a college basketball blue blood in the NCAA tournament. Ndiaye had 12 points on 6-of-9 shooting and was impossible for Louisville to deal with inside, making 6'8" Cardinals power forward Montrezl Harrell look puny in Louisville's narrow victory.
"He looked eight feet to me," Louisville coach Rick Pitino said of Ndiaye to Eddie Pells of the Associated Press.
Ndiaye is a Senegal-born project who has battled injuries in his first two college seasons but has been dominant when able to stay on the court.
He missed 19 games during the 2014-15 season with a foot injury, returning in late February for the stretch run as the Anteaters made their first NCAA tourney. He played less than 20 minutes per game for the year but still managed to pour in 10.5 points and 5.1 rebounds per game. As a freshman, he shot 70.7 percent and averaged 3.1 blocks per contest.
The allure of getting to coach Ndiaye for another season likely influenced coach Russell Turner in his decision to turn down the George Mason job this offseason.
Alec Peters, Valparaiso
13 of 19
Year: Junior
Position: Forward
Height, weight: 6'9", 225 lbs
Like many mid-major programs, Valparaiso has to search far and wide to fill out its roster with quality players. That often means having to look overseas, as the Crusaders had players from Canada, Croatia, Jamaica and the Netherlands this past season.
But coach Bryce Drew's best player came from only three hours away from the Indiana campus, in Illinois. Alec Peters has been everything Valpo could have asked for since coming there two years ago, and last season, he was a key reason the Crusaders made their second NCAA tournament appearance in three years.
Peters led Valpo in scoring (16.8 points) and rebounding (6.7) while shooting 48.9 percent from the field and 46.6 percent from three-point range. He drained 83 three-pointers, including four in the second-round NCAA tourney loss to Maryland.
Jermaine Ruttley, Arkansas-Little Rock
14 of 19
Year: Senior
Position: Guard
Height, weight: 6'3", 200 lbs
After toiling in relative obscurity last season for Florida A&M, which wasn't eligible for the postseason because of low APR scores but probably wouldn't have gotten there since it went 2-27, Jermaine Ruttley decided he would spend his final season somewhere else.
The MEAC standout picked Louisiana Tech for his destination, but before signing anything, he backed out of that commitment when Tech coach Michael White left for Florida.
Arkansas-Little Rock benefited from this change of heart, landing an impact transfer who averaged 17.4 points and 6.7 rebounds per game last season.
The Trojans went 13-18 last year and didn't have any players score more than 12.1 points per game or average better than 6.6 rebounds.
John Simons, Central Michigan
15 of 19
Year: Senior
Position: Forward
Height, weight: 6'8", 221 lbs
The average college basketball game has 60 to 70 possessions, a number that's sure to rise with the NCAA approving a change to a 30-second shot clock. This won't bump it up to 100 per game, but if it did, then Central Michigan would be able to expect more than 140 points produced each night by John Simons.
Simons led the country in offensive rating, which measures a player's points produced per 100 possessions, at 144 per game. The next-best player in the country—Aaron White of Iowa—was at 133.9 last season.
Central Michigan maximized Simons' performance from 2014-15, when he averaged 12.3 points and 6.5 rebounds and shot 49.8 percent. That included nearly 62 percent shooting on two-pointers and an over 45 percent rate on threes. The Chippewas parlayed that into a Mid-American Conference regular-season title.
Rayjon Tucker, Florida Gulf Coast
16 of 19
Year: Freshman
Position: Forward
Height, weight: 6'5", 185 lbs
Florida Gulf Coast had its moment in the sun a few years back when Dunk City pushed the Eagles into the Sweet 16 of the 2013 NCAA tournament. That run enabled coach Andy Enfield to get a better job—he is at USC—and also increased the school's national profile.
It paid off this past recruiting cycle, as FCGU was able to sign the highest-rated player from the 2015 class of any school outside the power conferences.
Rayjon Tucker, a 3-star wing from Charlotte, was ranked by 247Sports as the No. 142 player in the country and the second-best in North Carolina. He also had offers from Boston College, Clemson, North Carolina and VCU.
AJ West, Nevada
17 of 19
Year: Senior
Position: Forward
Height, weight: 6'9", 235 lbs
When veteran assistant (and former NBA head coach) Eric Musselman was hired by Nevada to run its program this offseason, the hire was praised by CBSSports.com's Sam Vecenie because he was regarded as a "terrific teacher of basketball."
The first step in his work will be to continue the development of AJ West, who with some extra seasoning could be an NBA player.
West was the lone bright spot on Nevada's 9-22 team last year, averaging 12.1 points and 11 rebounds per game. He led the nation with 178 offensive rebounds, grabbing more than 22 percent of the offensive boards he was in position to collect.
Musselman spent the 2014-15 season working with LSU big men Jarell Martin and Jordan Mickey, both of whom are projected by NBADraft.net as second-round draft picks.
Jalan West, Northwestern State
18 of 19
Year: Senior
Position: Guard
Height, weight: 5'10", 175 lbs
The floor general for the country's highest-scoring offense, Jalan West knows how to both find the open man and determine that he's the one who should take the shot. As a result, West helped produce 21.5 points per game in 2014-15, the most of any Division I player.
West did so by averaging 20 points per game and 7.7 assists, which was also tops in the country. With 246 assists and only 90 turnovers, West was effective at running the offense and keeping Northwestern State's high-octane attack (which averaged 84 points per game) running on all cylinders.
Teammate Zeek Woodley averaged more than 22 points per game, and he and West were the only tandem to average 20 points each last season. West shot 45.6 percent from the field with a 42.2 percent efficiency from three-point range.
Kris Yanku, Northern Arizona
19 of 19
Year: Junior
Position: Guard
Height, weight: 6'4", 183 lbs
The most successful Northern Arizona team in program history had an unlikely hero in Kris Yanku, who fought his way into the starting lineup as a freshman and broke through this past season. And he did it with some of the most aggressive play in the country, which led to a Division I-leading 230 free-throw attempts.
Yanku made a respectable 79.6 percent of his foul shots, which contributed to nearly half of his 13.8 points per game. He also led the Lumberjacks in assists at 5.1 per game, along with 4.5 rebounds.
NAU reached the CollegeInsider.com Tournament this year—its first-ever postseason tournament—and with Yanku coming back, the 'Jacks could be pushing for an NCAA tourney bid.
Follow Brian J. Pedersen on Twitter at @realBJP.
.png?w=480 "NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament Championship")
.jpg?w=600 "Colts Release Kenny Moore")
