Nebrasketball Player Profiles: Teddy Allen

Will there be football or will there not be football? For the next few paragraphs or so . . . we aren’t worrying about that! This is all about Huskers Hoops. Continuing our preseason coverage of profiling each player on the Nebrasketball roster, we will introduce another transfer: Teddy Allen.

Allen is one of the most intriguing players on Hoiberg’s squad this year in my opinion. Teddy was a 3-star guard out of Boys Town, Nebraska (that’s right, a homegrown boy). Where he was the Player of the Year in Nebraska in 2017. He averaged 31.6 points, 12.8 rebounds, 4.1 assists, and 3.3 steals per game. He even had a quadruple-double. He committed to the West Virginia Mountaineers out of high school.

He was the first high school player in the state to average over 30 points per game since 1996. Long story short, the kid was a scoring machine, someone that could have fit in an integral role for Bob Huggins and the Mountaineers. His freshman year in Morgantown, Teddy averaged 7 points and 2.7 rebounds getting under 12 minutes per game. He had a few 20-point games as well, earning Big 12 Newcomer of the Week at one point.

What went wrong? He was playing as a true freshman on a really talented and nationally-revered program. Well, while he provided important scoring punch off the bench, ‘Teddy Buckets’ was apparently disrespectful to a West Virginia assistant, so Huggins benched him and said “Teddy needs to be quiet and listen.”

With a promising freshman season on the court, despite his 3-for-25 shooting from beyond the arc, Allen transferred to the Wichita State Shockers, another basketball school, where he would have a second chance with another great coach and player developer in Gregg Marshall. The NCAA did not grant him a waiver for immediate eligibility, so he had to sit out his first season in Witchita.

Unfortunately, another off the court incident after his redshirt year meant Teddy wouldn’t ever see the court for the Shockers. In June, Allen was arrested on a charge of domestic violence and a charge for property crime and petty theft, both misdemeanors. Allen was dismissed from the Wichita State program shortly after his arrest.

Allen wanted to get closer to home for his next stop. But with no offer from Nebraska or Creighton, he chose to go the JUCO route and join Western Nebraska Community College. With what may be his last shot, Allen was not throwing it away. Instead, he would blow us all away. (Sorry for the Hamilton reference)

In his lone season with the Cougars, Allen got back to his high school numbers, averaging 31.4 points, 7.4 rebounds, 3.7 assists, and 1.6 steals per game. Allen led all NJCAA in scoring and had the highest average of any player since 2014. Allen shot 51 percent from the field, 37 percent from three, and 88 percent from the line. He had four 40-point games and two triple doubles as well.

‘Teddy Buckets’ was back. And Fred Hoiberg and Matt Abdelmassih took notice. Keeping an eye on him from the beginning, Allen’s resurgence sealed it: the Huskers wanted him, as Hoiberg believed he could give Nebraska a go-to scorer it lacked in many instances in his first year in Lincoln.

Now Allen has another chance, perhaps his last. He will have two years of eligibility left in Lincoln, where he will most likely be a starter and relied on to be a top scorer, especially with the departure of Kobe King (and most of the entire team from last year except Thor). Will he be able to do that in the Big Ten?

Allen showed his flashes of brilliance for West Virginia, where he was playing among top competition and for a top coach. While he never played for Gregg Marshall and the Shockers in the year he spent redshirting, he was still learning and growing under a great player developer. While Western Nebraska may not sound like a big school, his coach there, Cory Fehringer, was hired as an assistant coach for the DI Northern Colorado Bears this year.

Lastly, we know Fred Hoiberg is a fantastic player developer, as well as caring for them off-the-court. While it was a winding road, full of struggles and roadblocks, Allen may have wound up in the perfect place to flourish and become a team leader.

Watch out for Teddy Buckets in LNK this year, folks.