Arizona Wildcats Breakout Star Makes Small Forward Award Watch List
KJ Lewis of the Arizona Wildcats is coming off a Pac-12 All-Freshman honorable mention season and at least one award watch list believes he’s ready to take a big step as a sophomore.
Lewis was one of 20 players selected to the Julius Erving Award watch list, which is given to the nation’s best small forward at the end of the season. The list features some of the most proven players in college basketball, such as Kansas’ AJ Storr, along with one of the game’s top freshman talents in Duke’s Cooper Flagg.
While Arizona has the 6-4 sophomore listed as a guard, he’s a part of this watch list and for good reason. He’s coming off a freshman year in which he made a significant impact off the bench, as he averaged 6.1 points, 3.1 rebounds, 1.9 assists and 1.1 steals per game. His 38 steals were tied for the ninth-most by a freshman in Arizona history.
He had an assist-to-turnover ratio of 2.3, which ranked ninth among all freshmen nationally with at least 69 assists. He could also see improvement as a 3-point shooter this season, as he shot 34% from distance a year ago, along with nearly 80% from the free-throw line.
One of his best games was his season-high 18 points against UCLA, a game that helped Arizona clinched the outright Pac-12 regular season championship in its last season in the league.
Arizona is joining the Big 12, along with three other Pac-12 schools, after the conference fell apart over several issues, including television rights fees and the initial spark of USC and UCLA leaving for the Big Ten.
The Wildcats signed him out of Duncanville (Texas) High School, where he averaged 16 points and nine rebounds per game and emerged as a four-star, Top 100 recruit nationally. While with the Panthers he led them to a 29-1 record and the No. 1 ranking in the final national rankings according to USA Today.
Before that he played three seasons of high school basketball at Chapin High School in El Paso, Texas, where he was a finalist for Mr. Texas Basketball Player of the Year his junior year.
As a junior, he was a finalist for Mr. Texas Basketball Player of the Year. As a kid he grew up in Tucson and went to Mesquite Elementary School in Vail prior to fifth grade.
His teammate, guard Caleb Love, was recently named to the watch lists for the NABC Division I Player of the Year, the Naismith Men’s Player of the Year and the 2025 Jerry West shooting guard Award.
The Wildcats were selected to finish fifth in the Big 12 men’s basketball preseason coaches poll and are ranked in the Top 10 in the nation in the AP preseason Top 25.
