Buck: Two worthy stars’ careers at an end

A common outlook on the relationship between sports fans and their rooting interests is to cheer for one’s favorite team only; idolizing athletes foremost is perhaps dangerous.

Like everyone else, they are susceptible to faults and imperfections. Care too much or believe too deeply in the superlatives and almost all of them will ultimately let you down.

And that is how this writer has elected to feel … for the adage has been realized far too many times.

Two of the best point guards in college basketball, however, are shining, contrarian beacons to the notion that this cynic has held for far too long.

The collegiate basketball careers of Kendrick Perry and Aaron Craft are at their ends. Perry, an Ocoee, Fla. native, carried a Youngstown State program for four years before last last week’s gut-wrenching overtime loss at Oakland (Mich.) in the Horizon League tournament.

Craft’s Ohio State Buckeyes will be a longshot to advance deep in the NCAA Tournament after an inconsistent season hurt by transfers and defections for the NBA.

But watching both players will their teams and their programs, and doing it with incredible class on and off the court, will reverberate long after they have left their respective universities.

Players, but more so people, like them are what make rooting for athletes truly fun once in a while.

Perry and Craft are both invaluable to their teams, but in completely different ways.

Perry has an all-around offensive arsenal that should, according to a colleague, find him a spot on an NBA team. This season he averaged 21.3 points per game, 4.4 assists, 2.4 steals in over 36 minutes on his way to all-conference honors in national obscurity. He is near the top of almost every statistical category in the YSU record book.

It is a wonder how YSU coach Jerry Slocum plucked him out of Florida before major college programs recruited him toward brighter lights and the bigger stage before he became a once-in-a-generation talent at YSU.

Craft, a Findlay legend who nearly beat Ursuline in the 2008 Division IV state football final, is possibly too famous; a player whose publicity exceeds his abilities, but never his all-out effort. He is the most polarizing player in college basketball for those reasons. His offensive game, limited by a mediocre jump shot, is at its best when he can assist reliable scorers (he set the Ohio State record) or drive to the basket on broken plays.

But there’s probably not a better defender in college basketball. Craft is simply the best on-ball defender in the country. He takes over games with relentless defense and his physicality set the Big Ten record for steals while infuriating opposing fans.

He has been the rosy-cheeked face of one of the most consistent basketball programs of the past decade.

Two very different players, but two people whose impacts are much greater than their basketball accomplishments will show.

Perry will make a career of basketball if he so chooses. Slocum and every other basketball mind who has watched him play could only gush about what an ambassador he has been for YSU, the program and a university that has needed a smiling face. Unbeknownst to many, he has been named to the Horizon League and YSU honor roll six times and has earned Academic All-Horizon League status this season.

Small crowds, rough winters, losses and injuries never once slowed him down.

Craft, who has been filmed on national TV solving a rubik’s cube in under 60 seconds, is a four-time Academic All-American who plans to study medicine once basketball runs its course.

Mentions of his academic prowess and beloved status on campus are as common during TV broadcasts as his diving attempts for loose basketballs, like the game-saving play he made to beat Michigan State on Sunday. Esteemed Spartans coach Tom Izzo said it was “an honor to coach against him.”

It has undoubtedly been an enjoyable four years, the likes of which fans of both teams will not see again.

To the next generation of aspiring stars: you’ve got some big shoes to fill.

Write Vindicator sports writer Ryan Buck at rbuck@vindy.com and follow him on Twitter, @rbuck04