Best NCAA basketball players ever from every state

South Dakota: Jon Sundvold

The state of South Dakota can be viewed in one of two ways. Either, Jon Sundvold’s stats are better than Mike Miller’s only if you do not take into account his freshman year at Missouri while he was playing third fiddle to Larry Drew and Steve Stiponvich. Or, you can say that Mike Miller was good enough in his two years at Florida that you can include every game to determine how well he played in college.

Without Sundvold’s freshman year his scoring average is higher than Miller’s at 17 points per game to 13 per game. He outrebounded Miller by almost two at 7.7 boards, he is less than half an assist behind while shooting 13 percent better from the field and just five percent less from the free-throw line. Miller’s numbers in the nine tournament games he played were good enough to garner him All-Region team honors during the 2000 tournament by averaging 13 points and almost eight rebounds.

Sundvold played at most three games in a single tournament and in his seven career games, he averaged 11 points with two rebounds, while shooting 85 percent from the free-throw line. As a 6-foot-2 guard, he never averaged four assists but would be named to the All-American second team.

One may have to take Sundvold’s freshman year out of the equation and value an All-American second-team selection over a tournament All-Region team to give Sundvold the edge over Miller, but if that is not enough, Miller did shoot just 39 percent from the field in the tournament.