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“You really need to check out this kid from Nebraska,” my dad told me back in the winter of 2020. Baylor Scheierman—The Players in Green The kid from small-town Nebraska makes good. At the time, he was paying more attention to the South Dakota State men’s basketball team than I was. SDSU had been in the weeds a bit. Before the mid-majors were just a stop on the way for up and coming basketball players, they had become a stop on the way for up and coming basketball coaches, and SDSU was on their third coach in six years, plus they hadn’t made the NCAA tournament in three years. I kind of knew the squad, but I was following the women’s team more closely. The kid my dad wanted me to check out was Baylor Scheierman from Aurora. Scheierman is the middle child in a family of five. Both of his older sisters, Jama and Jasa, lettered in volleyball, with Jasa also being a key contributor for the basketball team at Aurora. His younger sister Masa was a standout player for the girl’s basketball and volleyball teams in neighboring York, Nebraska, while his younger brother Booker played football and basketball for the Aurora Huskies. Aurora is located a little ways east of Grand Island and a couple miles off interstate 80, with a population of around 4,700 and a high school with fewer than 400 students enrolled across grades nine through twelve. The Aurora Huskies compete in Nebraska’s Class B for basketball and C1 for football, two sports in which Scheierman excelled. As a high school student, Baylor’s football stats were far gaudier than his basketball numbers. While he was never able to lead the Huskies to a state championship in basketball, he led Aurora to the C1 title in 2018, a season where he threw for 3,942 yards and a class record 59 passing touchdowns as well as 6 rushing touchdowns against just seven interceptions. The 13 game campaign was capped off with a 49-7 victory over Ord in the state championship game. During the season, he set a class record by throwing for eight touchdowns in a game against Kearney Catholic. After the close of his senior season on the football field, Scheierman swapped his cleats for basketball shoes, and nearly averaged a double-double. He recorded 22.1 points per game and 9.8 rebounds, to go along with 6.5 assists, as the Huskies went as far as the semifinals in the state basketball championship, finishing the season with a 26-3 record. But it wasn’t Baylor’s senior year performance that got South Dakota State interested. Eric Henderson, who was then T.J. Otzelberger’s assistant at SDSU, had Baylor on his radar after a sophomore campaign in which he averaged just nine points per contest, but flashed enough big game potential to catch the eye of the future Jackrabbit coach. One game that likely stood out to Hendo came on Friday, February 10th, 2017, when Aurora found themselves in a ten point hole against Crete late in the 3rd quarter. The sophomore Scheierman took over the game and went on a personal 10-2 run consisting of two free throws, a layup and back-to-back threes. South Dakota State tendered an offer to Scheierman later that year which he accepted in November, just before the start of the basketball season. “I like the family atmosphere they showed me,” Scheierman said, adding, “they made me a priority.” Scheierman said that the Jacks expected him to be an “integral piece” in getting their program to the next level. Going into college, Scheierman had confidence in his game—but he wasn’t prepping for an NBA career, “I went there with expectations that, well, I’m going to play four years and graduate and go work somewhere.” As a freshman, Scheierman saw a lot of action, playing in 32 games, but he was backing up sophomore Alex Arians, so he saw only three starts. However, he made a sophomore leap into the starting lineup. In his second year, Baylor earned First Team All-Summit League honors, and showed a nose for the ball that was reflected in 8.65 defensive rebounds per game, a rate that was good enough to rank third in the country. He logged 13 double-doubles in 23 games and shot 49.8% from the floor. Baylor’s junior year saw him make another leap. He was the Summit League Player of the Year, a finalist for the Lou Henson award for the best mid-major player in college basketball, and the only player in NCAA’s Division I to lead his conference in both rebounds and assists. He recorded 11 twenty point games, and he took SDSU to the NCAA tournament for the first time in four years. That summer, Scheierman declared for the NBA draft—a bold move that reflected his confidence that he could compete at basketball’s highest level. Although Baylor ultimately decided to return to school, he did get a workout scheduled with the Boston Celtics. While the team had no interest in drafting him at that time, they did provide him with constructive feedback. “They really liked my game,” Scheierman said, but they felt that he needed to get a little stronger, a little quicker and a little more explosive. Scheierman took the feedback to heart. “that’s what I really tried to improve on,” he recalled. When Baylor went back to school, he switched from being a Jackrabbit to a Bluejay. He took advantage of the NCAA’s new provision that allowed students to transfer without skipping a year to head back to Nebraska and play for Creighton, the state’s basketball powerhouse and a member of the Big East conference. The move was an opportunity for Scheierman to test his mettle against a higher class of competition and develop his game further. Due to the COVID shortened 2019/20 and 2020/21 campaigns, the NCAA awarded every player enrolled those years an extra year of eligibility, giving Baylor two seasons to work on his game at Creighton. Scheierman made good use of his time as a Bluejay. In his fourth year and first season against tougher Big East programs, Scheierman was an honorable mention All-Big East award winner. He continued to hone his defensive rebounding skills, notching 271 for the year—more than any Creighton player since the school started tracking those stats. His 13 double-doubles were the most of any Creighton player in 25 seasons, and the Bluejays made it to the Elite Eight that spring. In his fifth season, he was a unanimous selection to the All-Big East first team. He became the first player in over twenty years to record 300 rebounds and 110 three pointers, and he became the first player in Creighton history to notch a traditional triple double with 15 points, 11 rebounds and 11 assists in a game against Georgetown. He ended the season with an average of 18.5 points per game, 9 rebounds, and 7.4 assists. As he entered the draft, there were questions about his ability to play defense. Having been the top scoring option for the Jackrabbits and the Bluejays over the past four seasons, his defensive assignments and team expectations were comparatively lax. This led to prognostications that he would be a defensive liability in the NBA. What was missing in this analysis was consideration of both Scheierman’s defensive rebounding rate, which was consistently one of the best in the NCAA’s highest division, and his basketball IQ. Defensive question marks notwithstanding, the Celtics liked what they saw, and Brad Stevens made the call with the 30th pick in the 2024 draft, bringing Scheierman on as a 23 year-old rookie. Although he was drafted primarily for his skills on the offensive side of the court, the reality under Joe Mazzulla’s system is that the path to playing time was going to be through defense. As a rookie, Scheierman put in 14 games with the Maine Celtics in the G-League, where he showcased his offensive chops, averaging 20.5 points per game, along with 5.2 assists and 6.2 rebounds. Those appearances with the junior squad went along with 31 appearances and a pair of spot starts with the parent team. In his second year with the team, Scheierman’s appearances jumped from 31 games to 77, notching 20 starts and averaging 18.6 minutes per game. With Scheierman on the court, the team’s offense sizzled to the tune of 128 points per 100 possessions, a 14 point differential over the team’s 114 point per 100 possession defensive rating. While Scheierman is still finding his footing as a scorer, carrying a -.7 offensive box plus/minus for 2025/26, he finished the season with a 1.3 defensive box plus minus rating, good for fourth on the team among players with 65 or more appearances. My dad, who was a lifelong Celtics fan as well as a late life convert to the Jackrabbits, never got to see Baylor put on the green and white—we lost him in February of 2024. For that reason, I’m always going to have a special spot reserved for the kid from Aurora who made it to the big time.