Indiana Basketball: Did Big Ten get All-Decade team right?
By Adam Childs
The Indiana basketball team got two players on the Big Ten All-Decade team, but did the conference get it right?
The Big Ten recently released their All-Decade team in basketball and the Hoosiers got two players on the list. Yogi Ferrell made the third team and Victor Oladipo made the second team. It was a nice honor for both of them but should they have been higher?
Ferrell tied in voting with Aaron Craft of Ohio State for point guard on the third team and was beat out by Cassius Winston or Michigan State and Trey Burke of Michigan for the second and first team.
All four players are very good, but lots of Hoosier fans were not happy with Ferrell only making the third team.
Most fans understood Winston being above Ferrell, but there were a lot of comments about why Burke was ahead of Ferrell. It’s not a bad question, but let’s look at their career stats.
Ferrell – 14.5 PPG, 4.8 APG, 0.8 SPG, 40% 3PT, 46% 2PT
Burke – 16.9 PPG, 5.7 APG, 1.3 SPG, 37% 3PT, 50% 2PT
At first glance, you can see why Burke was ahead of him. He had better stats in everything but three-point percentage in the major categories. But Burke only played two years while Ferrell played four. If you dive a little deeper and take Ferrell’s last two years at IU it starts to change.
Really if you take his last three years it would be a big difference also, but since Burke only played two years we will take Ferrell’s last two years. We could take his sophomore and senior years and make a bigger argument, but we will just stick with two consecutive years.
His stats during his junior and senior years were: 16.8 PPG, 5.25 APG, 0.9 SPG, 42% 3PT, 44.5% 2PT.
The stats are very comparable to Burke’s and if you include his sophomore year he did it over a three-year stretch. Ferrell’s freshman year wasn’t bad, but not great.
When you have players that are that close, it becomes accomplishments that will set them apart. And like it or not, Burke did accomplish more and on the biggest stage. Burke won the AP player of the year in 2013 and led the Wolverines to the National Title game that included him single handily leading the comeback against Kansas in the round of 32.
Ferrell had an amazing career and helped lead the Hoosiers to great heights, but if you look at it close enough you can understand why Burke was ahead of him.