There is plenty of Canadian talent set to suit up in the 2023/24 College Basketball season.
We chose the top 10 Canadian players to watch this year.
Let's get the obvious one out of the way. Edey is the reigning winner of the Wooden Award, Naismith Award, and the AP Player of the Year Award, and he's a 7-foot-4 center with skill.
In his season full of individual awards, Edey averaged 22.3 points, 12.9 rebounds, 1.5 assists, and 2.1 blocks. He scored 16 points with 11 rebounds, two assists, and four blocks in Purdue's season opener against Samford.
Edey is +150 to win the Wooden Award for the second year in a row.
If Ryan Nembhard's name looks familiar, it's because his older brother Andrew plays in the NBA for the Indiana Pacers. Younger brother Ryan followed in his older brother's footsteps by transferring to Gonzaga this offseason.
Nembhard was a full-time starter for Creighton last year before transferring. He averaged 12.1 points, 4.8 assists, and four rebounds, and it is likely that Gonzaga coach Mark Few will look to him to run the offense.
A top-50 recruit in the class of 2022, just about everything went wrong in Elijah Fisher's freshman year at Texas Tech. He decided to transfer to DePaul in the offseason, where he will compete in the Big East.
The 6-foot-6 guard/forward did not get the opportunity to show much of his skills in 12.2 minutes per game on average. Texas Tech coach Mark Adams resigned last season, so it makes sense that Fisher wanted a fresh start.
Tyrese Samuel, a 6-foot-10 forward from Montreal, transferred from Seton Hall to Florida for his fifth year of NCAA eligibility. He started and scored 15 points with eight rebounds in Florida's season-opening 93-73 win over Loyola.
Last year, Samuel was a full-time starter for the first time in his career. Florida, a program with huge history that missed last year's NCAA tournament, is a step up from Seton Hall and Samuel will aim to hold down a starting spot all season while helping the Gators improve upon last season.
Edmonton native Ben Krikke transferred to Iowa for his fifth year of NCAA eligibility after a great career at Valparaiso where he was a three-year starter and earned three All-Missouri Valley Conference awards.
The Iowa men's team will fight for attention in the shadow of the school's women's basketball team, led by superstar Caitlin Clark. But on the men's side, Krikke helped the Hawkeyes to a winning start, starting and scoring 18 points in a 110-68 victory over North Dakota.
Emanuel Miller, a native of Scarborough, Ontario, transferred to TCU from Texas A&M after his sophomore year. Entering his fifth year, Miller is coming off a season averaging career highs in points (12.3), assists (1.7), and three-point percentage (39.2).
Miller started well in 2023/24, scoring nine points and grabbing nine rebounds in TCU's 108-75 season-opening win over Southern. He will compete in the Big 12 with talented opponents including Kansas, Baylor, and Houston, and he is +30000 to win the Wooden Award.
After playing 13.4 minutes off the bench per game in his freshman year and representing Team Canada in the 2023 FIBA U19 World Cup, Lee appears ready to step up into a bigger role in the Princeton Tigers backcourt.
He played 30 minutes in Princeton's 68-61 win over Rutgers in the season opener, and he scored 16 points while adding five assists and shooting 3/6 from beyond the arc. Princeton ended the year tied for first in the Ivy League with Yale, and Lee will lead the charge to win it outright this time around.
Michael Nwoko enters the University of Miami as a 6-foot-10 freshman, and he came off the bench to play nine minutes in the No. 13 Hurricanes' 101-60 win over NJIT in the season opener.
Nwoko scored nine points and grabbed three rebounds. Based on the playing time he received in the blowout win, it's likely the four-star recruit will be on the fringes of the rotation in key games, so make sure to watch him before the schedule gets really tough.
The second Ivy League player on this list, Nana Owusu-Anane nearly doubled his points per game average from his freshman to sophomore year, seeing it rise from 5.7 to 10.3.
A team captain as a sophomore last season, Owusu-Anane will lead the charge to improve upon Brown's 7-7 conference record from last year. He was the team's second-leading scorer with 20 points in Brown's season-opening 72-70 loss to Colgate.
Luka Sakota, a 6-foot-6 guard, transferred from Harvard to Northeastern in the offseason. Despite being a graduate student, he likely has another year of eligibility left after this season due to the Ivy League canceling the 2020/21 basketball season.
Sakota, an Etobicoke, Ontario native, regressed slightly from 2021/22 to 2022/23 at Harvard. In Northeastern's season-opening 67-58 win over Boston University, Sakota led the team in scoring and assists with 17 and five, respectively.
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bet365 News Team
Oct 25 2023
