{"id":24018,"date":"2019-06-20T18:15:12","date_gmt":"2019-06-20T22:15:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=24018"},"modified":"2019-06-20T18:15:21","modified_gmt":"2019-06-20T22:15:21","slug":"auroras-nembhard-returning-to-florida-gators","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/auroras-nembhard-returning-to-florida-gators\/","title":{"rendered":"Aurora\u2019s Nembhard returning to Florida Gators"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By\nJake Courtepatte<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Andrew Nembhard will not be tearing up the\nNBA just yet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The sophomore baller announced late last\nweek his intent to return to the NCAA\u2019s Florida Gators for one more collegiate\nseason, foregoing his insertion into the 2019 NBA draft pool.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Named to the Southeastern Conference\nAll-Freshman team after averaging 8.0 points and finishing fifth in league in\nassists at 5.4 per game, Nembhard waited until the final seconds before\nthe deadline to pull his name from contention, after meeting with dozens of NBA\nscouts and executives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI wouldn\u2019t necessarily say I\u2019m glad that\nit\u2019s over, but I\u2019m definitely happy I went through it and got to experience it\nall,\u201d said Nembhard from his Aurora home, where he is taking some\nmuch-deserved time off after leading the Gators to a March Madness berth. \u201cI\nlearned a lot of stuff about the process and what I need to improve on, as well\nas what teams like about me. I got some great feedback from teams who were very\noptimistic about how my game will translate to the league a few years from now.\nI got to compete against some great players and think I got better over the\nlast month just by going through the process and working out with my\ntrainers.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nembhard, who attended Vaughan Secondary\nSchool through his first two years of high school before finishing out his high\nschool career at a prep academy in Florida, is no stranger to the spotlight: he\nwas thrust into the starting point guard position at Florida this season in\njust his freshman year, and has shared the court and the spotlight on plenty of\noccasions with former teammate R.J. Barrett, projected to go as high as second\noverall in this year\u2019s NBA draft.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet the budding star sees returning to the\ncollegiate level as the key to raising his own draft stakes, and is willing to\nstay patient and wait one more year for the opportunity, adding on Twitter\n\u201cSuper excited to come back and play with my brothers and for Gator Nation!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019m going to take that to another level this season, what with all the\nnew guys coming in,\u201d Nembhard said of the constant flux of teammates in the\nNCAA. \u201cI\u2019ve seen some of these guys play and I think we\u2019ve got a really good\ngroup of hungry competitive dudes who will set a good tone in practice and take\nus into the season. I\u2019m going to demand from them what it takes to win. I\u2019ve\nwon on every level of basketball in my life and last year taught me what it\ntakes to win at the college level.\u201d<\/p>\n\r\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Andrew Nembhard will not be tearing up the NBA just yet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[24,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24018","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-sports","category-sports"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-6fo","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-14 11:22:16","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24018","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24018"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24018\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24018"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24018"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24018"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}