Big Ten Basketball: 5 breakout candidates to watch for 2024-25 season

Xavier Booker - Michigan State Spartans

Another player with ample opportunity to increase his usage and minutes is Michigan State forward Xavier Booker. With Malik Hall and Tyson Walker gone, the Spartans need some of their talented recruits to step up from last year. Few players have the talent of a former five-star recruit, and Booker has had the chance to develop under one of the game's great coaches. Booker was the eleventh-ranked recruit in the country in his class and will have ample opportunity in a Michigan State frontcourt that lacks talent.

Booker is an athletically gifted and skilled big, who showed the ability to step out and shoot the three. This could offer major production to a team that doesn't have a clear first option, next to fellow sophomore Jeremy Fears Jr.

Brock Harding - Iowa Hawkeyes

The fifth breakout candidate resides in the state of Iowa. Sophomore Brock Harding will be handed the keys to an offense featuring an NBA-level shooter in wing Payton Sandfort, and one of the best young bigs in the country in Owen Freeman. Playing behind point guard Tony Perkins, chances were limited for the freshman. But he steps into a situation that any young point guard would be happy with and already showed an ability to limit turnovers.

As a freshman, Harding displayed an assist-to-turnover ratio of 3.25:1, with an outlier assist rate of 38 percent. If Harding keeps these numbers anywhere near that rate with a much-increased role, he could be one of the best playmakers in the conference and the country.