Oakland PG Kay Felder To Enter Draft

WEDNESDAY, 7:46am: Felder is actively seeking an agent and doesn’t plan to return to school, as he tells Tony Paul of The Detroit News, adding that the only way he would go back to Oakland is if he can’t find an agent he’s comfortable with.

TUESDAY, 10:26am: Oakland University point guard Kay Felder will enter this year’s draft without an agent, sources told Jon Rothstein of CBSSports.com (Twitter link). The 21-year-old junior can return to school for another year if he withdraws by May 25th and doesn’t sign with an agent. Felder has a legitimate chance to be drafted in spite of his diminutive 5’9″ height, as he ranks 69th in Chad Ford’s ESPN Insider rankings. Jonathan Givony of DraftExpress pegs him 72nd.

That’s in part because of his impressive numbers. He led NCAA Division I with 9.3 assists per game and was third in scoring average at 24.4, though he did so against mediocre competition. Oakland, part of the Horizon League, played only the 182nd-strongest schedule among Division I teams, according to Sports Reference. Still, Felder delivered against top competition when he had the chance, scoring 37, one off his season-high, against Michigan State, which earned a No. 2 seed in the NCAA Tournament, and 30 points against eventual NCAA Tournament No. 1 seed Virginia.

He’s also a strong rebounder for his height, having grabbed 4.3 per game this season, and he kept his turnovers relatively low at 3.4 per contest. The most significant questions surrounding Felder involve his defense, though his sometimes listless performance on that end of the floor is in part because of the energy he had to expend on offense for Oakland, Givony writes. The Golden Grizzlies needed all they could get from Felder, as they finished second in the Horizon during the regular season but lost their first conference tournament game and were relegated to the Las Vegas 16, a first-year postseason tournament.

Felder entered college outside the top 100 in the 2013 Recruiting Services Consensus Index, and while he won Horizon Freshman of the Year honors, he didn’t become a scoring force until he was a sophomore, lifting his points per game from 9.5 to 18.1.

View Comments (5)