Nebraska Basketball: Cornhuskers Lands A Needed Transfer in Dachon Burke

While Nebraska Basketball waits on some NBA Draft decisions, the team is getting some more talent to set up their future for success.

Nebraska Basketball had arguably their best regular season of all time last year. They were able to use a favorable schedule, and finish in the top half of the Big Ten. Coach Tim Miles was able to lead an experienced and talented group of kids to an NIT appearance. The 13 conference wins and the overall 22 wins are some of the tops in the regular season in Nebraska history.

Coach Miles was able to work this season into a one-year contract extension, and his first order of business was to go and fill out the 2018 class. He and the staff has a great class expected to come in, but with the loss of key assistant coach Kenya Hunter, Miles lost the services of the prized piece in this class in point guard Xavier Johnson. He has since committed to Pittsburgh.

Welcome Dachon Burke

Miles has always liked to build his program using transfers. Lots of coaches have gone this route and Iowa State is the other prominent program that comes to mind. Coach Miles had his eye on a transfer from the Northeast Conference. That player was Dachon Burke. Ever since Burke announced his intention to transfer from Robert Morris, Tim Miles and top assistant Michael Lewis have been on Burke.

Late last week Burke announced his commitment to Nebraska.  He will be eligible to play in the 2019-2020 season. Burke had a great sophomore season for the Colonials of Robert Morris, averaging 18 points a game, 6 rebounds and about 2 assists per game. Miles was able to secure the scorer through a visit to his home in New Jersey and using an official visit to see the facilities in Lincoln.

Burke is a perfect fit for the offense that Nebraska likes to run.  The Huskers like to get into the paint using their post players and their athletic guards. This past season, Burke took 50% of his shots last year in the paint. He is great at getting to the rim, and that is where he takes most of his shots, aside from taking the high percentage shot, while also getting fouled a lot. The one downfall of this was that Burke was not a great foul shooter last year. Burke had 151 attempts at the line last year and hit 62% of his shots. He’ll need to improve his foul shooting if he wants to reach his full potential at the major college level.

Past success with transfers

Since his coaching tenure has begun at Nebraska Tim Miles has never been able to land the program changing point guard. Incumbent point guard Glynn Watson is a great player but is often times better suited as an off guard, which also can be said about current guard Thomas Allen. Burke will only have two years in the program, but it should give Miles some time to find and groom his next point guard at the University of Nebraska.

In his redshirt year, Burke is going to be going against James Palmer Jr. and Glynn Watson every day in practice making them better, all while making himself better. Burke is going to use the redshirt year to work on all the deficiencies in his game especially his shooting from the line. He is also going to get stronger and develop the Big Ten Basketball body.

Nebraska has always been fortunate when landing transfers, their transfers have all developed into their best players on the team the next season. However, Nebraska has never landed a transfer that has put up as prolific of numbers as Burke has.  Former Cornhuskers Terran Petteway and Walter Pitchford transferred to Nebraska after playing sparingly at Texas Tech and Florida respectively. Anton Gill played at Louisville on their National Championship team but still did not have the scoring prowess that Burke has displayed. Andrew White III transferred to Nebraska from Kansas, having barely played and not scoring much at his previous stop.

On the current roster, James Palmer Jr. is a transfer from Miami of Florida. He was an interesting player, as he was a former top 25 recruit who never saw much of the floor at Miami. No one knew what to expect from Palmer and he was one of the biggest surprises in College Basketball this year. Isaac Copeland is another transfer on the current roster. Copeland came from Georgetown and came highly regarded, he did not disappoint.

Even with all of these transfers, the point still remains, no player that Nebraska has secured from the transfer market came in with as prolific of numbers as Burke did. He averaged as many as points as Palmer Jr. did in a non-transfer year.

Next: 2018 NBA Draft Board 1.0

If Burke is able to advance his game, the same way that the previous transfers in Lincoln have, Burke could make history for the program. He could be one of the biggest recruits in the Tim Miles era, not to mention in Nebraska Basketball history.