CHICAGO – Dating back to high school, Talor Battle has been the underdog.
As an undersized, 5-foot-11, 155-pound point guard coming out of Bishop Maginn in Albany, N.Y., the writers that named him first-team Class AA New York All-State team as a senior knew how good he was, but few big-time college basketball programs were interested.
In fact, when he committed to play for Penn State and head coach Ed DeChellis late in his junior year, his offers were from just Massachusetts and Siena.
More than three years later, the secret is out.
On Thursday, Battle was selected by the media to the first-team pre-season All-Big Ten team at the Big Ten basketball media days in Chicago for the second consecutive year. He appears alongside Michigan State’s Kalin Lucas, Ohio State’s Evan Turner, Manny Harris of Michigan and Robbie Hummel from Purdue, all considered among the best in college basketball’s junior class.
Refusing to stray from the disrespected identity that has defined his aggressive play for so long, Battle was unimpressed by the honor.
“To be honest, I really don’t care about it because preseason doesn’t tell you what’s going to happen at the end of the year,” he said. “It’s the same thing I’m touching on with all these preseason rankings. Never will you see the preseason rankings finish the way they start and that’s how the Big Ten all-team selections are. ….
Read it all: BlueWhiteIllustrated.com – Battle garners great respect among Big Ten coaches.