College Stock Watch: Iowa’s Kris Murray
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While one-and-done college prospects are often the most appealing players in the NBA Draft, there’s always quite a few players that end up spending multiple years at that level before becoming impactful pieces in the league.
That trend will continue this year, as there’s multiple upperclassmen that have legitimate first-round upside. The year-over-year growth of these collegiate talents is quite impressive.
Whose stock has risen? What about fallen?
This week, we look at the draft stock of Kris Murray based on recent play.
Kris Murray (Iowa | Forward)
Gregory Fisher / USA TODAY Sports
Stock: Rising
Season Stats: 20.8 PPG | 8.6 RPG | 1.2 BPG
The twin brother of Sacramento Kings forward Keegan Murray, Iowa junior Kris Murray is having a breakout season. In fact, although a year later, it’s very similar to that or his brother’s ascension to stardom last season in an increased role.
Murray has played twice as many minutes on average this season relative to last, in turn doubling his scoring and rebounding output. Additional minutes on the court rarely ever results in production scaling out at the same rate, so this has been extremely impressive.
One of the most underrated parts of Murray’s game this season has been the tremendous offensive rebounding production. More holistically on the glass, he had a 20-rebound performance earlier this season as he flashed his upside on the glass.
As a scorer, Murray has developed into someone that can be a primary option in the Hawkeyes’ system. In the month of January alone, he scored 20 or more points five separate times, including two 30-point outings.
A quality defender at 6-foot-8, Murray looks like the perfect mold of a two-way combo forward at the next level.
He’s notched a 11.8 C-RAM metric according to Cerebro Sports this season, with an 80+ grade in four of their five advanced metrics. His two best scores have been an 87 PSP and an 84 DSI, which proves the two-way impact.
Most importantly, Murray has been a volume 3-point shooter this season, taking 6.5 per game and knocking down better than 35% of these attempts.
After seeing what Keegan Murray is doing at the NBA level after a breakout college campaign, it could be tough for teams not to want to take a risk on a his twin doing the same thing a year later.
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