Wisconsin junior small forward Sam Dekker has told Jeff Goodman of ESPN.com that he will enter the draft. Dekker is up to No. 15 in the rankings that Jonathan Givony of DraftExpress compiles and No. 15 with fellow ESPN scribe Chad Ford. No player had helped his draft stock as much during the first two weeks of the NCAA Tournament as Dekker did, Ford wrote at the time.
The 6’9″ 20-year-old’s numbers dropped off a bit in the national semifinals and the championship game, but it was nonetheless clear as Wisconsin made a strong bid for the title that Dekker has plenty of talent. He rose from a player expected to go in the final 10 picks of the first round to the 10-20 range, Goodman tweets. Dekker put up 13.9 points and 5.5 rebounds in 31.0 minutes per game for the season, but he averaged 19.2 PPG for the tournament as he nailed 15 of 26 three-point attempts, much greater than his 33.1% accuracy on three-pointers for the season.
It wouldn’t be altogether shocking for his stock to cool a bit once he goes through workouts and the memory of his tournament run fades, though that’s just my speculation. Still, it’s not as if Dekker’s stock is reaching unprecedented heights, since Givony had him at No. 11 before the season. He was the 19th-best recruit coming out of high school three years ago, according to the Recruiting Services Consensus Index.