The NCAA lifted its ban on freshman ineligibility for the 1972-73 season. Over the last decade, the very best never bothered to stop on campus, but a new NBA draft policy has led to Kevin Durant being at Texas.
The freshman is averaging 24.5 points and 11.1 rebounds. He is the only player in the nation in the top 10 in both categories, and Durant hasn’t done it against a cupcake schedule.
With three players taken among the top 42 in the 2006 draft, this should be a rebuilding year for Texas. But coach Rick Barnes put Michigan State, Gonzaga, LSU and Tennessee on the schedule, and Durant has thrived.
The 6-foot-9-inch, 225-pound Durant doesn’t look like someone who turned 18 in September. It’s what Texas expected when assistant coach Russell Springmann helped Barnes win a pitched recruiting fight for Durant.
“It’s not hard to see him as a top-five player in the NBA someday,” one NBA scout said.
Barnes learned his way around the Capital Beltway two decades ago, when he briefly took the George Mason job. Springmann went to high school in Montgomery County and was a senior guard at Salisbury State in 1989-90, when the Sea Gulls set a Division III record by averaging 104.5 points per game. Durant is from Suitland in Prince Georges County. He prepped at Oak Hill (Va.) Academy and then Montrose Christian.
Durant is clearly the premier player in the Big 12 and might be the best in the nation.
Sometimes, voters wish they could wait until late March to make decisions like those.
In 2002-03, Troy Bell of Boston College was the Player of the Year in the Big East. The U.S. Basketball Writers Association made Xavier’s David West their National Player of the Year and put him on an All-American team that included Dwyane Wade of Marquette, T.J. Ford of Texas, Nick Collison of Kansas and Hollis Price of Oklahoma.
The judging in that beauty contest appeared blurred when Syracuse freshman Carmelo Anthony dominated the NCAA tournament.
Ohio State’s Greg Oden and North Carolina’s Brandan Wright could go higher in the 2007 draft. But if Durant’s regular-season impact exceeds what Wisconsin’s Alando Tucker and Pittsburgh’s Aaron Gray put up, his youth probably won’t preclude him from consideration as national player of the year.
