Wisconsin Badgers: The “Average Joe” Player of the Year

By Daniel Tran | Apr 10, 2015

The Wisconsin Badgers forward Frank Kaminsky was named the John R. Wooden Player of the Year. His numbers back it up, but his lovably weird personality is what brought him over the top.

In what should be unsurprising to most of the nation, Frank Kaminsky, the Wisconsin Badgers‘ star forward and literally biggest goofball on campus, was just named the 2015 John R. Wooden Award recipient for being the most outstanding college basketball player this season. Just a cursory glance of his numbers tells a convincing story.

Kaminsky led the nation in player efficiency rating at 34.4, and overall win-shares at 9.8 wins contributed to the team based on his work on the offensive and defensive ends of the ball. He also ranked fourth in the nation in total points, scoring 732 for the season, and grabbing 262 defensive rebounds to led the Big 10 Conference in that category.

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As anyone who follows sports will tell you, his contributions and star-power go beyond the numbers. For all of the brilliance he has on the court, he has accomplished one of the most difficult tasks off it: staying grounded.

As much as college athletes are encouraged, even badgered at times, to be normal students, the exposure to national media surrounding high-profile players like Kaminsky can induce a lot of hype, causing athletes to be looked at and perceived as above the rest of the student body. This kind of worship can inflate athlete’s egos and convince them that they are in fact more important than other students.

In that sense, Kaminsky is a rarity. The big 7’0” point-center who can seemingly do it all has the appearance of a normal college student that just happens to the best basketball player in the country, not the other way around.

He’s not afraid to let his weirdness show and there is no fear of backlash of public perception because that’s just who he is. I mean, what other college basketball player would start his own blog after his fame exploded last season to talk about his love of the HBO hit “Entourage” or how the basketball team would be look as a baseball team?

He never hesitates to declare himself a video game master, though the rest of his teammates are quick to squash that notion. By all accounts and appearances, he’s just a regular college kid placed in an extraordinary position and loving every minute of it.

Perhaps that was a product of how he got to the peak of the college basketball mountain. Listed at 6’10” and 220-pounds, the three-star prospect from Benet Academy in Lisle, Illinois, came in with little expectation and even smaller fanfare.

As a freshman, Kaminsky only played 271 minutes in 35 games and averaging 1.8 points per game. By his sophomore season, he was only averaging 2.9 points in 67 games played. Despite being virtually unknown and basically forgotten, Kaminsky never failed to continue honing his skills in the wasteland of irrelevance.

After breaking out last season and scoring 13.9 points per game and grabbing 6.3 rebounds, Kaminsky never lost the person he was that got him there: the goofball that kept his head down and worked hard to get the most of every inch of his talent.

That personality has permeated to the rest of the team, allowing Nigel Hayes to stretch his comedic muscle in faux news segments that had everyone in stitches last season and this season. The team has followed his lead in being themselves rather than a caricature of what they are supposed to be.

It is that kind of leadership that brought the team together to make that run to the Final Four last season and to the National Championship game this season. Sure, Kaminsky’s numbers on the court were a huge factor in their success and netted Kaminsky three other player of the year awards, but it was his down to earth personality that won the hearts of voters everywhere.

Next: Looking Ahead at the Big Ten 2015-16

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