Bucky’s Fan Favorite Tournament Final Four: (1) Alando Tucker vs. (2) Jordan Taylor

With COVID-19 crushing everyone’s March Madness vibe, we at B5Q crafted our own tournament to determine which basketball player from the past 20 years was the biggest fan favorite.

After four rounds of voting, only a quartet of players remain.

For the Final Four, we will only hold one matchup a day. We at B5Q will state the case for each player, and then it is up to you the fans to vote and ultimately decide who moves on, and who is eliminated.

You can check out the complete bracket here...Bucky’s Fan Favorite Tournament - Bracket.pdf.

Second up is a showdown between the winner of the East Region in Jordan Taylor, and the winner of the West Region in Alando Tucker.

Photo by Jonathan Daniel/Getty Images

The case for Alando Tucker:

First and foremost, Alando Tucker is Wisconsin’s all-time leading scorer with 2,217 points, in 134 career games. Tucker overtook Michael Finley as the school’s all-time leader as a senior, when he was the B1G Player of the Year and was in the running for multiple national player of the year awards.

Tucker played in four NCAA Tournaments, reaching the Sweet 16 as a freshman and the Elite Eight in his sophomore campaign. As a junior and senior, Tucker led the Wisconsin Badgers in scoring with over 19 points per game, and also led the conference in in two-point field goal makes as well as total points.

Tucker joined the UW coaching staff this past season, following Howard Moore’s tragic accident which left an opening on the staff. Prior to joining the staff, Tucker served as UW’s Director of Student-Athlete Engagement since February of 2018. He worked with incoming student-athletes and their families to enhance how they acclimate to life at UW and in the community, in addition to sharing information about and using UW resources.

For his career Tucker averaged 16.5 points, 5.7 rebounds and 1.6 assists while shooting 48 percent from the field in 134 games.

A prolific dunker with freakish athleticism, Alando Tucker is one of the top overall players to ever play in a Wisconsin uniform. Tucker also probably pulled off the old school baggy UW jersey the best, and it is just a matter of time before his name hangs in the rafters of the Kohl Center.

Photo by Harry How/Getty Images

The case for Jordan Taylor:

There are certain players who you remember specific plays for and Jordan Taylor is one of those players. At one point, my Facebook profile picture was of Taylor blocking Kansas State’s Jacob Pullen’s shot in the NCAA Tournament to secure a win. God, what a sweet picture that was.

Anyway, Taylor was the consummate point guard for the Badgers during his career. Did you know that he turned the ball over just 79 TOTAL times in 71 career Big Ten games? And that his 3.01 career assist-to-turnover ratio shattered the NCAA record (2.70 - Julyan Stone, UTEP, 2008-11)? And that his 3.83 assist-to-turnover ratio in 2010-11 led the nation and was the 4th-highest mark in NCAA history?

Taylor also made the all-B1G first team twice and was a national All-American in 2011. During his senior season he averaged 18.1 ppg (20.1 in just B1G games). During his junior season he was second in the whole nation in turnover percentage and he also shot 42.9% from three on 175 attempts.

In the three seasons where he played more the 70% of the teams’ minutes he was in the top-200 for assist rate and top-100 for turnover rate each year. This was all happening while his usage was high too.