Star University of Kansas freshman has taken his lumps early on this season while other fab frosh like Kentucky’s Julius Randle, Duke’s Jabari Parker, and fellow Jayhawk Joel Embiid have made an instant impact this season.
But at presstime, Wiggins was averaging 16 ppg and 6.3 boards, not to shabby for an 18 year old Canadian hoops prodigy who has played only 16 games on the collegiate level.
The knock on Wiggins has been that he seems to blend in rather than stand out against opposing teams and players and hasn’t shown the killer instinct everyone was hoping for when he was favorably compared to NBA MVP Lebron James coming out of HS.
Maybe it was because he lacked a number of those breakout statistical games that Parker, Randle, and Arizona’s Aaron Gordon have already put up?
Outside of a handful of 20 point performances, highlighted by a career high 26 against Top 25 ranked Florida back in early December, Wiggins has looked largely average…..until now.
While his 7 foot freshman teammate Joel Embiid was having himself another stellar night, putting up 16 points, 9 boards, and 5 blocks on the Iowa State Cyclones, Wiggins was the star of the night, scoring 17 points and grabbing a career high 19 rebounds in helping Kansas remain undefeated in early Big 12 Conference action.
Wiggins joins only Kentucky’s Michael Kidd-Gilchrist(2011 vs Louisville) as the only freshmen in the past 15 years to do so in a road win against a ranked opponent.
Wiggins remains a potential Top 3 draft pick in our most recent 2014 NBA Mock Draft 2.0.
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.
