As the Wisconsin Badgers head into the 2014-’15 season with hopes of being a national championship contender, they’ll be anchored by a pair of returning starters from last season’s Final Four team: Sam Dekker and Frank Kaminsky.
Kaminsky and Dekker both were integral pieces to UW’s success last season, and each enters this year with heightened expectations. Both were selected to the preseason All-Big Ten team by the media, with Kaminsky being picked as the preseason Big Ten Player of the Year.
Though both players are widely considered to be among the country’s elite, the paths they’ve taken throughout their collegiate careers to get to this point couldn’t be much different.
On one hand you have Dekker, who has dealt with lofty expectations since the second he stepped on campus. The junior forward, a five-star recruit out of high school, was arguably the biggest name to ever commit to Wisconsin under head coach Bo Ryan.
“Sam’s one of those guys that’s just hungry to get better and better every single day,” Kaminsky said. “I think he’s one of the best players to ever come through this school, just from a talent and skill standpoint.”
Dekker has proven his worth during his two years in Madison, playing in all 73 of the Badgers’ games over that span.
During the 2012-’13 season, Dekker was named to the All-Big Ten freshman team and became just the fourth UW freshman to start a game during Ryan’s tenure. He continued to find success during his sophomore campaign, recording five double-doubles and averaging 12.4 points and 6.1 rebounds per game.
Many believe he might be poised for his biggest year yet after an impressive offseason that saw him shine at the LeBron James Skills Academy in July and even grow a couple of inches.
Meanwhile, Kaminsky enters the season with huge expectations of his own following his breakout year as a junior.
Last season, few people expected much out of the senior forward, who averaged 4.2 points and just over 10 minutes per game during the 2012-13 season, but he grabbed the attention of Badgers fans everywhere when he scored a school-record 43 points against North Dakota last November.
However, it was his stellar play in the NCAA tournament that really made him into a household name among college basketball fans all across the nation.
Kaminsky was named the West Region’s Most Outstanding Player following his 28-point, 11-rebound performance, which helped propel Wisconsin past Arizona and into the Final Four for the first time in 14 years.
Once an unheralded reserve, Kaminsky was the team’s leading scorer (13.9) and rebounder (6.3) last season and became the toast of the town following his dominating month of March.
“He’s been a very skilled guy since he came on campus,” Dekker said of Kaminsky’s improvement. “A lot of it was finding that inner fire, that killer instinct, and he’s found that.”
Redshirt senior guard Josh Gasser has had the opportunity to play with both Dekker and Kaminsky throughout the entirety of their careers at Wisconsin, and has been impressed with the way each of them has developed during their time in Madison.
“Sam came in as a high-profile recruit, everyone was expecting a lot out of him, and that can be tough to handle sometimes. But he’s done a great job with that,” Gasser said. “Frank is just the opposite. He had no expectations; he was trying to find his way in the rotation, trying to grind out all the minutes he could and play well. Finally his time came, and he took advantage of it.”
Both players could’ve entered the NBA Draft after last season, but spurned the opportunity and came back to play another year for Wisconsin.
Now, though they entered college on complete opposite ends of the spectrum, Dekker and Kaminsky have returned to lead an extremely talented Badgers team in pursuit of its ultimate goal—bringing a national championship to Madison for the first time since 1941.
