Before Devin Booker was winning 3-point contests, dropping 40-point games in the NBA Finals and making All-NBA teams, Booker was coming off the bench for Kentucky.
As Team USA men's basketball attempts to win a fifth straight gold, look back at Booker's time with Kentucky. Here are five NCAA facts that you may not know about Booker:
- While in college, Booker never started one game. For all 38 games that Booker wore a Wildcats uniform, he began the game with a warmup over his jersey, sitting next to John Calipari on the bench as Andrew and Aaron Harrison were Kentucky's starting guards for the season. Despite this, Booker earned All-Southeastern Conference Second Team and SEC All-Freshman Team honors in 21.5 minutes off the bench. Booker's performance on the court also won him SEC Sixth Man of the Year.
- Booker never lost a regular-season game in college. In Booker's only year at the collegiate level, Kentucky had a 31-0 regular-season record and picked up three more wins en route to an SEC championship. Booker and the Wildcats entered the NCAA tournament as the team to beat. Kentucky made it to the Final Four before suffering its first defeat of the season against Wisconsin, finishing with a 38-1 cumulative record. Booker scored 36 points through five games in Kentucky's 2015 NCAA tournament run.
- Devin isn't the only NCAA athlete in the family. Devin's father, Melvin, was a college basketball player at Missouri from 1990-94. In Melvin's senior year, he won the Big Eight Conference Player of the Year and was a first-team All-American. Melvin led the Tigers to a 14-0 conference record and eventually to the Elite Eight in the NCAA tournament. Melvin was inducted into the Missouri Hall of Fame in 1999.
- Booker was one of nine players on the 2014-15 Kentucky team that would make the NBA. After the Wildcats' defeat to Wisconsin in the Final Four, Booker entered the 2015 draft. Six other Kentucky teammates would join him in the process, and six of the seven players — including Booker — from the 2014-15 team would be drafted in 2015. Of those six who were drafted, four were chosen in the top 14 selections, which are known as lottery picks. These four players (Booker, Karl-Anthony Towns, Willie Cauley-Stein and Trey Lyles) made NBA draft history as these selections tied North Carolina in 2005 for the record for most players selected in the lottery from one school.
- Booker's career high at Kentucky was 19 points. He reached this mark twice: the first time coming against UT Arlington on Nov. 25, 2014, and the next one nearly a month later against UCLA on Dec. 20. Over the season, Booker averaged 10.0 points, 2.0 rebounds and 1.1 assists. Booker's career-high 19 points pale in comparison to his professional career high, which came only three years later in 2017. In a game against the Celtics in March of that year, Booker piled in 70 points.
