From averaging 4.2 points off the bench as an unheralded sophomore to staking his claim as the best player in all of college basketball, Frank Kaminsky’s incredible collegiate journey is complete.
Kaminsky was announced as the winner of the 2015 John R. Wooden Award Friday evening at the first-ever televised college basketball postseason awards show in Los Angeles, edging out Duke’s Jahlil Okafor and three other finalists. News of his win first broke Friday morning, when award organizers mistakenly sent out a news release announcing Kaminsky as the winner.
He was also named the winner of the new Kareem Abdul-Jabbar Award, given to the nation’s top center.
"It's been an unbelievable journey. I never thought I'd be in this position," Kaminsky said in an interview with ESPN's Rece Davis after winning the award. "I'm just so happy to be here and so grateful for all the people who think of me in such a high regard."
Besides Okafor, Kaminsky also beat out Kentucky’s Willie Cauley-Stein, Ohio State’s D’Angelo Russell and Notre Dame’s Jerian Grant to become the first player in Wisconsin program history to win the Wooden Award. He’s just the fifth Big Ten player to receive the award in its 39-year history, and is the conference’s first winner since Michigan’s Trey Burke was awarded it in 2013.
With the win, Kaminsky completed a clean sweep of all five major player of the year awards. In addition to the Wooden Award, he’s won the Naismith Award, the Oscar Robertson Trophy and both the National Association of Basketball Coaches and Associated Press player of the year awards.
The 7-footer, a consensus first-team All-American, averaged 18.2 points, 8.2 rebounds, 2.6 assists and 1.5 blocks per game in the final season of his collegiate career, helping lead the Badgers to a school-record 36 wins, both the Big Ten regular season and tournament titles and a second straight trip to the Final Four. He led the team in each of the aforementioned statistical categories and both overall shooting percentage (54.7) and 3-point shooting percentage (42.9) as well.
But it wasn’t just in the basic stats where Kaminsky excelled; advanced stats also supported his case for player of the year.
Kaminsky led the country in both win shares and player efficiency rating, and sat atop Ken Pomeroy’s player of the year ratings by a wide margin. To put it into perspective, the difference between Kaminsky and the second-ranked player in the KenPom ratings (Okafor) was greater than the difference between Okafor and the 10th-ranked player.
"It's just so awesome to look back at everything we accomplished. I had such a great career at Wisconsin. I had so many friends, so many coaches who helped me along the way," he said. "I'm just so grateful to the University of Wisconsin for helping me along that journey."
