Ever since the 2008-09 season, the one constant in the Purdue Boilermakers back court has been the steady point guard play by now senior Lewis Jackson. Even with star players like JaJuan Johnson, E’Twan Moore, and Chris Kramer graduating and continual injuries to leading scorer Robbie Hummel, the 5‘9 Jackson has been the pass-first type of PG that coach Matt Painter adores.
Outside of the 2nd half of the ’09 season, where Jackson was limited to only 16 games due to a foot injury, the pint sized floor general has been a defensive and distributing force partly responsible for the Boilermakers winning an amazing 83 games and becoming a mainstay in the Top 25 polls over the past 3 seasons.
The speedy floor general wears the number “23“, but that’s where the similarities between the most famous number 23, Michael Jordan, comes to an end. Where MJ in college played the game above the rim, continually punishing opponents and the rim with highlight reel dunks, Jackson is a career 6.4 ppg scorer and has exactly zero dunks to his credit in his 86 career games entering this season.
But that all changed in a win against Western Michigan as Jackson picked the pocket of an opposing player and raced to the rim for a thunderous one-handed dunk that surprised virtually everyone inside Mackey Arena, especially his teammates.
Check out Purdue’s Lewis Jackson’s First NCAA Dunk:
Allen Moll has been a lifelong NBA and NCAA College Basketball fan who watches and studies games religiously, and coaches youth basketball in his native Lehigh Valley region of Pennsylvania. Allen has also provided content to Bleacherreport.com, Upperdeckblog.com, Cleveland.com, CSN Philly.com, Buckets Magazine, in addition to being a tenured NBA and NCAA columnist for TheHoopDoctors.com.
