SALT LAKE CITY — Which college basketball players have had the best individual seasons during the one-and-done era?
That was a question that ESPN’s John Gassaway recently set out to answer. The one-and-done era all but officially began in 2007, when the NBA required prospective players to be a a year removed from high school in order to put their names up for draft consideration.
Since that time, going on 13 years now, there have been plenty of noteworthy campaigns. Gassaway decided to rank the top 50 and many of those come as little to no surprise.
No. 1 on the list was Zion Williamson’s single season (2019) at Duke, while Stephen Curry (2008 at Davidson), Anthony Davis (2012 at Kentucky), Kevin Durant (2007 at Texas) and Frank Kaminsky (2015 at Wisconsin) all made the top 5.
Coming in at No. 11 was BYU’s Jimmer Fredette. His performance in 2011 was singled out by Gassaway as one of the best of the era and for good reason. During that campaign, the Cougars’ guard averaged 28.9 points per game, led BYU to a 32-5 overall record and a berth in the Sweet 16 of the NCAA tournament. All of it was enough to make Fredette the Naismith Award winner and NABC National Player of the Year.
“You can watch basketball for a very long time before you find another player who makes so many 3s while shooting mostly 2s,” Gassaway writes. “Fredette drained 124 3-pointers, which still ranks in the top 65 all time as a season mark, yet tries from beyond the arc accounted for just 41% of his attempts. Since he averaged 28.9 points nine years ago, that mark has been topped by just two players: Campbell’s Chris Clemons (2019) and Central Michigan’s Marcus Keene (2017).”
Fredette wasn’t the only player who starred in the state of Utah to make the cut, though.
Utah’s Delon Wright also made the list, at No. 26, for his play in 2015.
That season, Wright led the Utes’ to a 27–9 overall record, a second-place finish in the Pac-12, not to mention the program’s second consecutive berth in the NCAA tournament.
Wright averaged 14.5 ppg, 5.1 assists per game, 4.9 rebounds and 2.1 steals in what was his final season at the U., before he was drafted by the Toronto Raptors with the 20th pick in the 2015 NBA Draft.
Wright rated ahead of Marcus Smart (2014 at Oklahoma State), Michael Beasley (2008 at Kansas State), Tyler Hansbrough (2008 at North Carolina) and Gordon Hayward (2010 at Butler), among others.
You can view the rankings in their entirety here.