Nebraska guard Keisei Tominaga will test NBA waters while maintaining NCAA eligibility
After a breakout finish to last season, Nebraska’s Keisei Tominaga will look to see where he stands at basketball’s highest level.
Tominaga confirmed to HuskerOnline on Monday night that he had officially applied for early entry to the 2023 NBA Draft while maintaining his college eligibility.
Since 2019, the NCAA has allowed players to hire a certified agent and go through the pre-draft process. Players have until the NCAA’s deadline of June 1 to withdraw from the draft and return to school.
The NCAA also allows players invited to the NBA Combine in May to return to college basketball if they go undrafted. This year’s NBA Draft will be held on Thursday, June 22, at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, N.Y.
Tominaga just finished his fourth season of college basketball. But he can return for a fifth season in 2023-24 with the NCAA-granted additional COVID-19 year. He’s on track to graduate with a human development and family science degree this summer.
Sources say the 6-foot-2, 175-pound native of Moriyama Nagoya Aichi, Japan, has already lined up a handful of workouts with NBA teams over the next few weeks.
Tominaga focused on NBA, Nebraska
No Nebraska player captured the interest of Husker Nation and college basketball fans around the Big Ten quite like Tominaga.
One of the driving forces behind Nebraska’s late-season turnaround, Tominaga recorded eight of his nine 20-point efforts during conference play.
He averaged a team-high 14.2 points per game in the Big Ten. He also ranked seventh in the league in field goal percentage (.510) and fifth in 3-pointers per game (2.4).
As a result, Tominaga’s already enormous basketball celebrity in his native Japan has also never been higher.
Some expected he’d have substantial professional contract offers back home. But it looks as if Tominaga will now decide between jumping to the NBA or returning to Nebraska.
A source close to the situation said returning to play professionally in Japan was likely no longer being considered.
The post Nebraska guard Keisei Tominaga will test NBA waters while maintaining NCAA eligibility appeared first on On3.
