Big 12 Basketball: Ranking of 25 best players from last decade (2013-23)
By Joey Loose
15. Andrew Wiggins
Wiggins was the top-ranked prospect in the Class of 2013 and would later become the top pick of the 2014 NBA Draft. In between, he did some pretty solid work in his one season at Kansas, becoming quite the star on a talent-loaded Kansas team under Bill Self.
That freshman season saw him average 17.1 points and 5.9 rebounds per game in what would be yet another Big 12 regular season title for the Jayhawks. Wiggins had 22 points in an early season win over Duke, the first chance to showcase his talent. He had a 17-point, 19-rebound effort at Iowa State in January and would score a career-high 41 points in the regular season finale against West Virginia. Unfortunately, Stanford would end Kansas’s journey in the second round of the NCAA Tournament in a game that wasn’t a great performance from Wiggins.
The season didn’t end exactly how Wiggins or Kansas wanted, but it was still an extraordinary effort. Wiggins was named a Second Team All-American and won Big 12 Rookie of the Year. It’s hard to complain too much about a season where he’s First Team All-Big 12 and emerged as one of the top scorers in the league. As previously mentioned, Wiggins would continue on to success in the NBA after the Cleveland Cavaliers grabbed him with the first pick.