Herro, Washington Make NBA All-Rookie Second Team

Subhead

Fourteen players from Calipari’s first 10 Kentucky teams have been tabbed All-Rookie

Image
  • Tyler Herro UK Athletics
    Tyler Herro UK Athletics
  • PJ Washington UK Athletics
    PJ Washington UK Athletics
Body

Not only does the Kentucky men’s basketball program develop more players for the NBA than any other program in the country, the Wildcats are proving time and time again that they’re better prepared than any other competing alumni.

The latest example was the Tuesday release of the 2020 NBA All-Rookie teams, which featured former UK men’s basketball stars Tyler Herro and PJ Washington, both of whom made the All-Rookie Second Team.

It’s the eighth time in the last 10 seasons a player has made one of two All-Rookie Teams after playing at Kentucky, plus the 10th time in 12 seasons for a John Calipari-coached player when including Memphis standouts Tyreke Evans and Derrick Rose. It’s also the fourth time in the last 10 seasons there have been multiple Wildcats on the All-Rookie teams, including three in both 2015-16 (Karl Anthony-Towns, Devin Booker and Willie Cauley-Stein) and three in 2010-11 (John Wall, DeMarcus Cousins and Eric Bledsoe).

With the selections of Washington and Herro, 14 Wildcats have earned All-Rookie status over the last 10 years, the best mark of any school during that time period. Calipari has coached 16 in the last 12 seasons when factoring in Evans and Rose.

A global panel of 100 sportswriters and broadcasters selected this year’s NBA All-Rookie teams. The media voted for five players for the first team and five players for the second team at any position. Players received two points for each first-team vote and one point for each second-team vote.

The voting was conducted based on regular-season games played through March 11.  The seeding games, which were played July 30–Aug. 14 as part of the 2019-20 season restart, did not count toward voting for the NBA All-Rookie Team or the league’s other traditional end-of-season awards.

Herro earned 115 total points, coming up just a point shy of the final first-team selection, Eric Paschall (Golden State). He also received 23 first-team votes.

Washington tallied 88 total points with eight first-team votes.

The UK duo was joined by Terrence Davis II (Toronto), Coby White (Chicago) and Rui Hachimura (Washington).

Kentucky tied Gonzaga with two representatives on the All-Rookie teams.