As expected, St. Joe's star DeAndre' Bembry will not be returning for his senior season.
Bembry, 21, officially declared for the draft, he announced in a statement to Dick Jerardi of the Philadelphia Daily News on Monday.
He hired an agent, which means he cannot pull back and return to St. Joe's after going through the pre-draft process.
"This decision was extremely difficult," Bembry said in the statement, "but at this point I want to focus all of my attention on the next phase of my basketball career and I'm ready to take this step."
Bembry, a 6-foot-6 do-it-all forward, averaged 17.4 points, 7.8 rebounds, 4.5 assists and 1.4 steals for the Hawks this season. The only other player in the nation with at least those averages was LSU's Ben Simmons.
Perhaps most importantly, Bembry, the Atlantic 10 and Big 5 Player of the Year, saved some of his best games for last.
He scored 30 points on 13 of 16 shooting in St. Joe's Atlantic 10 Tournament title game win over VCU. Bembry followed that with 23 points, six rebounds, five assists, two steals and three blocks in the Hawks' NCAA Tournament first-round win over Cincinnati. In the narrow loss to 1-seed Oregon in the Round of 32, he put up 16 points and 12 boards.
Bembry played 239 of 240 possible minutes in St. Joe's last six games.
The lone blemish on Bembry's junior year stat line was his 26.6 percent shooting from three. He had shot 33 percent and 35 percent from distance the previous two years. But he's a dynamic athlete who can drive and score at will, and he shot 47.9 percent overall from the field this season.
It's unclear just what range Bembry will fall in the NBA draft. DraftExpress.com has him going 32nd overall, the second pick in the second round, but you'd think leaving school early would have been less appealing if Bembry and his camp thought he wasn't a first-round talent.