Best NCAA basketball players ever from every state

Kansas: Wayne Simien

Kansas is a great basketball state, the Jayhawks have won three National Championships and the Wildcats have made four Final Fours. The state can lay claim to 36 NBA players and the fact that it is illegal statewide to catch fish with your bare hands. As difficult as it sounds to actually break that law, it was just as difficult to determine the best college player to be born in The Sunflower State.

The three college players that stood above were; Alvan Adams, Wayne Simien, and Scott Wedman. Wedman was a talented player for Colorado over his three years and as the only future NBA player on his team, he averaged 16 points, nine rebounds. He may have not had the benefit of a conference tournament to win awards at, but he did have a chance at Big 8 Player of the Year and lost out to Lon Kruger twice.

The decision eventually came down to Alvan Adams and Wayne Simien, where the stats favor Adams. Over 73 regular-season games at Oklahoma, Adams averaged eight more points than Simien with 23 per game, grabbed five more boards per game, and shot five percent less from the field while winning the Big 8 Player of the Year in his final season.

Stats are important especially if all things are equal, but even though they played in the same conference, it was 30 years apart. Simien is the only one who made it to the tournament, and besides the year when the best Iowa born player was on his team, Simien was the primary option in the two other years. Simien was selected to the All-American team, sharing honors with Andrew Bogut and Chris Paul. Simien would also match Adams’ conference Player of the Year, thus giving the home-state Jayhawk the decision.