The Wisconsin men’s basketball team may have lost two of the country’s best players in Frank Kaminsky and Sam Dekker last year to the NBA, but that doesn’t mean the Badgers have run out of stars.

Once again, UW will have a pair of players in the national spotlight to start the 2015-16 season, as both junior forward Nigel Hayes and junior guard Bronson Koenig were added to the watch lists of their respective positional awards.

Men’s Basketball: Badgers to be featured in ESPN, CBS TV lineups

Hayes has been named to the watch list for the Julius Irving Award, which recognizes the top small forward in the country, while Koenig will be up for the Bob Cousy Award for the best point guard in the country. Both awards contain 20 finalists each in their preseason watch lists.

For Hayes, the preseason awards continue to accumulate, as he has already been named a preseason All-American by Sporting News. The forward will look to build on a strong sophomore campaign where he averaged 12.4 points and 6.2 rebounds while starting all 40 games for Wisconsin, and he now enters a junior season where he will likely be at the head of UW’s offense.

Men’s basketball: Nigel Hayes named to Sporting News’ preseason All-American team

Koenig stepped onto the national scene last season after he took over as the team’s starting point guard when then-starter Traevon Jackson went down with a leg injury. As a result, Koenig started the final 24 games for the Badgers and finished with averages of 11.5 points and 2.7 assists per game. The then-sophomore also made a habit of hitting clutch shots late in games for UW.

Hayes joins Dekker — who was a finalist for the award last year — as the only Wisconsin players to be named to the Irving watch list, while Koenig joins the ranks of four former UW point guards — Devin Harris, Jordan Taylor, Trevon Hughes and Kammron Taylor — to make the preseason watch list for the Cousy award.