It’s been about 2 weeks since Kris Dunn announced that he was not going to enter this year’s NBA draft and decided to come back to Providence College for his Junior year.  I had to wait an appropriate amount of time in order to make sure that it wasn’t a dream.  I had all but resigned to the fact that he was headed to the NBA as he was projected as a late lottery to mid-first round pick and his game probably even translates better to the NBA than it does to college.

Buuuut, it seems like Christmas has come early and ShowTime Dunn is headed back to lead next year’s Friars and hopefully get them deeper into the NCAA tournament after a sour taste from last year’s opening round loss to Dayton (that’s still the first round to me, not those stupid play-in games).

With the return of Dunn, the Friars will most likely start the season ranked in the lower part of the Top 25.  Dunn was named to to the second or third team All-American lists for CBS Sports, NBC Sports, and a couple of others, but not on any of the three teams by the Associated Press, which seems like kind of a joke to me.  If that even played a 1% part of him returning to school and being even hungrier than ever, I’m all for it.  As Kris would say, “Let’s Eat.”

Dunn sat down with Vin Parise of CoxHub (which is always a go-to for Friars media) and said the two biggest reasons for him returning to school were to finish his degree (he’ll be an academic Senior this year as he red-shirted one year) and to work on the weaknesses of his game.  This is the kind of star that any school would want.  Academics (and family) are extremely important to him and he recognizes that he has parts of his game that he needs to work on, mainly to bring his turnovers down and to improve his outside shot.  He assisted on a crazy 50% of baskets when he was on the floor.  That’s insane.  He was also third in the nation in assists per game (7.5) and fifth in steals per game (2.7), so those parts of his game are pretty fucking fantastic already.

The best part about Kris Dunn is that he doesn’t settle for where he is and knows there’s always room to grow as a player and person.  That’s the kind of guy I want playing for my alma mater.

Here’s a little Kris Dunn highlight reel to hold you over until next year…