Kentucky freshman twins Aaron Harrison and Andrew Harrison have decided to return to school next season, reports Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports (Twitter link). The guards were highly touted entering the season, and Andrew was a particularly hot prospect, checking in at No. 8 on both Jonathan Givony’s DraftExpress rankings and Chad Ford’s ESPN.com Big Board in late October. Aaron was at No. 32 with Givony at the time, but Andrew and Aaron have slipped to 39th and 53rd, respectively, in Givony’s ratings. Ford has Andrew 31st and Aaron 33rd.
The brothers were torn and went back and forth on the idea of entering this year’s draft as Sunday’s deadline to declare approached, Wojnarowski adds via Twitter. They were reportedly leaning toward going into the draft as of earlier this month, but people around the league weren’t enamored with them. The Harrisons heard from several teams that they would be late first-round picks, but they feel they can up their stock with another year in school, tweets Sean Deveney of The Sporting News.
Andrew, a combo guard, averaged 10.9 points, 4.0 assists and 2.7 turnovers in 31.7 minutes per game for Kentucky this season. Aaron, who plays shooting guard, put up 13.7 PPG in 32.6 MPG. They’ll compete for shots and playing time on a loaded Kentucky team that returns potential 2014 draftees Willie Cauley-Stein, Alex Poythress, Dakari Johnson and others to go along with another strong recruiting class, so there’s certainly no guarantee the Harrisons will be in better position for the 2015 draft.
Finally a team based on unity and a team philosophy that is no longer about the individual but the team.