Wisconsin basketball: Frank Kaminsky is one of the best B1G players of the decade

Over the past week Big Ten Network has been unveiling their choices for the best B1G men’s basketball players of the past decade. A panel of 24 voters, including former Badgers and current BTN analysts Ben Brust and Brian Butch, decided on the teams. On Wednesday, they debuted the first team and Wisconsin Badgers center Frank Kaminsky obviously made the cut. This comes a day after Ethan Happ was named to the second team.

The consensus national player of the year in 2015, Kaminsky was a clear choice to be named on of the five best players of the last decade and he should be in serious contention to be named the best player of the decade when that is announced on Friday.

Over his career Kaminsky was named first team All-B1G twice, B1G Player of the Year once and B1G Player of the Week a school record six times. He holds the school’s single game scoring record (43 points against North Dakota) and set UW’s career blocks record with 153. In his senior season he led the Badgers in points (18.8), rebounds (8.2), assists (103), blocks (57), FG% (.547), 3FG% (.416), FTs (156), FTAs (200), and was second for steals (33). He also helped the Badgers to back to back Final Fours, in case you forgot about all that.

The rest of the first team is Michigan’s Trey Burke, Michigan State’s Denzel Valentine and Draymond Green and Ohio State’s Evan Turner. When discussing this on Twitter a number of people thought that Jordan Taylor could have replaced Ohio State’s Aaron Craft on the third team. Nigel Hayes was probably also in the discussion for a spot, one would think.