25 Best College Basketball Players of the Past 25 Years
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Edit, here’s the link to the article: https://www.espn.com/mens-college-basketball/story/_/id/37880049/the-top-25-men-college-basketball-players-25-years
Since it’s essentially a dead time for sports, this is when we usually see these types of articles pop up to generate traffic. Myron Medcalf at ESPN put together his list of the top 25 college basketball players of the past 25 years. His criteria was basically that overall resumes weren’t a big factor (I’d call BS on that based on team achievements of a few of the players), but the “talent, skill, dominance and impact” a player had while in college were the main criteria. It also shouldn’t be too big of a shock that based on Medcalf’s criteria a lot of the top players were OAD guys. Also, most players were Wooden Award winner and most of the non winners played the same season as someone else on the list that did win it that season. What’s surprising to me is that there aren’t any KU players on this list as I can think of 4 that would be worthy (Drew Gooden, Nick Collison, Kirk Heinrich, and Frank Mason)
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Kevin Durant (Texas)
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Anthony Davis (Kentucky)
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Zion Williamson (Duke)
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Jay Williams (Duke)
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Steph Curry (Davidson)
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Tyler Hansbrough (North Carolina)
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JJ Redick (Duke)
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Carmelo Anthony (Syracuse)
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Kenyon Martin (Cincinnati)
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Trae Young (Oklahoma)
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Michael Beasley (Kansas St.)
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Dwayne Wade (Marquette)
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Shane Battier (Duke)
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Richard Hamilton (UConn)
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Elton Brand (Duke)
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Emeka Okafor (UConn)
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Doug McDermott (Creighton)
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Blake Griffin (Oklahoma)
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Buddy Hield (Oklahoma)
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Kemba Walker (UConn)
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John Wall (Kentucky)
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Evan Turner (Ohio St.)
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Adam Morrison (Gonzaga)
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Jimmer Fredette (BYU)
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Jalen Brunson (Villanova)
The criteria change I would’ve made was that the player’s entire college career had to take place in the last 25 years, so basically a freshman during the 1998-99 season which would eliminate Kenyon Martin, Shane Battier, Richard Hamilton, and Elton Brand for me personally. But Medcalf just made it any player who played a season after that point.
My thoughts on this list as is are that Shane Battier and Kenyon Martin are too low. K-Mart before he broke his leg was one of the most physically gifted basketball players I’ve ever seen amd one of the biggest what-if’s in college basketball history. I’m also surprised there weren’t any KU players as there are 4 that were very much worthy of being included and Inwas also surprised there was only 1 UNC player included as I was expecting to see Sean May on here as well.
Adding players to this list also means taking players off to make room for them. If is was my criteria, then it’d be a simple swap as I’d remove Martin and Hamilton to add a couple of worthy KU players. The first KU player I’d add is Frank Mason as he’s KU’s only Wooden Award winner during this time and I’d remove Evan Turner. The other KU player I’d add is probably Nick Collison and I’d remove John Wall.
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Kind of a dumb list using those criteria, but whatever. Mostly good players
I always thought the Beasley hype was more than he was worth. Did Blake Griffin ever play in a game against KU?
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@DanR said in 25 Best College Basketball Players of the Past 25 Years:
Kind of a dumb list using those criteria, but whatever. Mostly good players
I always thought the Beasley hype was more than he was worth. Did Blake Griffin ever play in a game against KU?
It’s a dead period for college basketball so writers need content. It’s a fun way to generate discussion and based on the article, it sounds like Medcalf is going to be doing some type of list pretty regularly during the summer.
Looking at Blake Griffin’s game logs, he played 5 minutes against KU in the '07-08 game. I know he missed the following year with a concussion and is probably the only reason why KU won the Big 12 that year because OU with a healthy Blake Griffin was better than KU that season.
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KMart was great. My roommate was a big Cincy fan so I followed that team closely. Martins injury was the most devastating to the chances of a team going into the post season, maybe other than Derrick Rose going down down for the Bulls in meaningless endgame minutes.
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It’s only a dead period in sports for ESPN which just will not make baseball a priority. I agree that these lists help pass the time, but baseball has been and always will be my favorite with NCAABasketball a close 2nd. Nowadays the two sports seasons end when the other is starting up so there’s basically about a week in very early November when there’s neither going on.
It does seem strange to not include a KU player. My other bias really wants Frank Kaminsky represented. Not sure how a National Player of the year doesn’t make it, just like Frank Mason, who should represent KU along with Nick Collison.
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@wissox This is the time of year I don’t pay a ton of attention to baseball. It’s past the start of the season, the trade deadline is over a month away and every team is basically treading water now so for me, this is the most boring part of baseball season.
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Speaking of best players… quite a few good players are playing in the TBT in wichita. Anybody going? We went last year and saw the horrible injury to Perry, right off the bat. Without him they were terrible! First time ever, I wanted to leave a KU game early.
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@Crimsonorblue22 said in 25 Best College Basketball Players of the Past 25 Years:
Speaking of best players… quite a few good players are playing in the TBT in wichita. Anybody going? We went last year and saw the horrible injury to Perry, right off the bat. Without him they were terrible! First time ever, I wanted to leave a KU game early.
Hopefully they live up to the 1 seed they were given.
So far, the confirmed roster includes Dedric Lawson, Devon Dotson, Jamari Traylor, Keith Langford, Lagerald Vick, Marcus Garrett, Mario Little, Thomas Robinson, Tyshawn Taylor, and Wayne Selden with Morris Twins coachingthem. I’ve also heard Mitch Lightfoot is expected to join up in the next couple of days as well.
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@Texas-Hawk-10 I’m planning on going. If they play together they’ll be good. Twins better coach.
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That is a pretty stupid list.
Even for Myron Medcalf, I would expect better. Udoka Azibuke was totally dominant until Covid. Devonte Graham could be on the list as well… And skipping all three Collison, Hinrich and Gooden is idiotic.
The other way to look at this is to note the winningest program in the past 25 years, and then ponder how there are zero players from that program on the list.
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I love Steph Curry, but I guarantee if his ankle injury early in his career had persisted or if the warriors hadn’t brought in Kerr and his system, he would not be on this list. (In other words, his NBA career impacted his selection.) Otherwise, why wouldn’t Doug McDermott be on this list?
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Speaking of Curry, I’m watching him and Klay playing golf vs mahomes and Kelce on tnt
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@bskeet said in 25 Best College Basketball Players of the Past 25 Years:
I love Steph Curry, but I guarantee if his ankle injury early in his career had persisted or if the warriors hadn’t brought in Kerr and his system, he would not be on this list. (In other words, his NBA career impacted his selection.) Otherwise, why wouldn’t Doug McDermott be on this list?
Doug McDermott is 17th on the list.
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@Texas-Hawk-10 said in 25 Best College Basketball Players of the Past 25 Years:
@bskeet said in 25 Best College Basketball Players of the Past 25 Years:
I love Steph Curry, but I guarantee if his ankle injury early in his career had persisted or if the warriors hadn’t brought in Kerr and his system, he would not be on this list. (In other words, his NBA career impacted his selection.) Otherwise, why wouldn’t Doug McDermott be on this list?
Doug McDermott is 17th on the list.
LoL Dur.
I swear I looked at the list. Oh well. McDermott’s college career seemed more celebrated than Curry’s (although Curry is clearly the better player).
But Zion? He was mostly hype. Surprised Myron didn’t stuff Kyrie on this list.
Anyway, this whole thing is ridiculously subjective and probably purposely so… All Myron has to offer in the offseason is clickbait.
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@bskeet said in 25 Best College Basketball Players of the Past 25 Years:
@Texas-Hawk-10 said in 25 Best College Basketball Players of the Past 25 Years:
@bskeet said in 25 Best College Basketball Players of the Past 25 Years:
I love Steph Curry, but I guarantee if his ankle injury early in his career had persisted or if the warriors hadn’t brought in Kerr and his system, he would not be on this list. (In other words, his NBA career impacted his selection.) Otherwise, why wouldn’t Doug McDermott be on this list?
Doug McDermott is 17th on the list.
LoL Dur.
I swear I looked at the list. Oh well. McDermott’s college career seemed more celebrated than Curry’s (although Curry is clearly the better player).
But Zion? He was mostly hype. Surprised Myron didn’t stuff Kyrie on this list.
Anyway, this whole thing is ridiculously subjective and probably purposely so… All Myron has to offer in the offseason is clickbait.
A big chunk of the players on the list won the Wooden Award and the ones that didn’t lost to someone else on the list. As I said in an initial post, discussion and debate is the primary purpose of this type of article because it is the offseason for college basketball. Pretty much every site that covers college basketball is going to be putting out articles that are subjective in nature with the intent of generating debate and traffic because that’s all there is right now for college basketball.
