NBA draft buzz may be growing for Iowa Hawkeyes’ Kris Murray

Keegan Murray of Iowa continues to be listed in the first five-to-seven picks of just about every NBA mock draft you can find online.

The first-team All-American will hear his name called early in the June 23 draft in Brooklyn, N.Y. An emerging question is if his twin brother, Hawkeye forward Kris Murray, also will be drafted this year.

Kris Murray announced last month that he would enter the draft while maintaining his college eligibility. He hadn’t surfaced on anyone’s Top 60 list before that.

That’s different now. Recently, The Athletic’s Sam Vecenie had him 50th on his mock draft list. Which, would be in the second half of the second round.

Thursday, NBA writer Jeremy Woo of Sports Illustrated ranked the top 100 draft-eligible players, noting it was “in conjunction with intel and opinions gathered from a wide range of sources around the NBA and the basketball industry.”

Woo has Kris Murray at No. 37, which would be an upper second-round pick if the draft went according to his list, and the seventh-highest from the Big Ten.

Woo said Kris is “intriguing enough for the long term that a team might want to consider trying to keep him in the draft a year early.“

Kris averaged 9.7 points, 4.3 rebounds, 1.1 assists and 0.9 blocked shots coming off the bench last season, his first of significant playing time. He had a 29-point, 11-rebound game against Indiana, and scored at least 11 points in five of Iowa’s last six Big Ten games.

Comments: (319) 398-8440; mike.hlas@thegazette.com