Nik Stauskas clinched the Big Ten Player of the Year award last as the Michigan Wolverines crushed the Illinois Fighting Illini 84-53. (The award will be officially handed out on Monday) He’s also likely to be a first round pick in the NBA Draft in June, in the high teens/early twenties range. Here’s where we have him slotted in our latest NBA Mock Draft) And he’s a new Canadian basketball icon.
Move over Bill Wennington and Steve Nash, there’s a new premier Canuck hoopster.
The Illini nation, especially the Orange Krush….FELT THE WRATH OF CANADA!!!!
I asked Stauskas about being harassed with the “U-S-A! U-S-A! chant last night. Here’s his response, and video of the on the court sequence.
Nik Stauskas led all scorers with 24 points, on blistering 8-11 shooting, including an even more scorching 7-9 from three.
“It wasn’t good enough, he fell short of the record,” Jordan Morgan joked after game.
“He was hot man, it was just people moving the ball, and not forcing shots.”
Michigan shot 70% (16-23) from three point land for the game. If they do that again in the NCAA Tournament, they might just make it all the way back to the Tournament championship game.
“When teams are hitting their threes, they’re going to be tough to beat. We realize that we weren’t going to shoot like this every game, we realize that our defense need to be there and our ball-handling,” Stauskas said.
Nik Stauskas strikes me not as a rich man’s J.J. Redick, but as a 1-percenter’s J.J. Redick. So that would be an extremely wealthy man’s J.J. Redick. Stauskas is bigger, taller and create his own shot and shots for others much better than Redick can. It took J.J. three years to establish himself in the league, but I bet Nik Stauskas will arrive quicker than that. “Make the leap” so to say, at an earlier time. Take notice that I am not comparing the college careers of the two players, but one current NBA career versus another potential NBA career.
I asked Illini leading scorer Rayvonte Rice what makes Nik Stauskas so tough to defend.
“You just can’t give him space,” he said.
Here’s an in depth scouting report on Stauskas from our partners at Walter Football.
Paul M. Banks owns The Sports Bank.net, an affiliate of Fox Sports. An MBA and Fulbright scholar, he’s also a frequent analyst on news talk radio; with regular segments on ESPN,NBC, CBS and Fox. A former NBC Chicago and Washington Times writer, he’s also been featured on the History Channel. President Obama follows him on Twitter (@paulmbanks)