Thursday, March 03, 2005
NCAA to the NBA
I have been thinking about how strong a program UConn has become, not just in terms of winning the Big East and making the tournament every year, but in how it is moving players to the pros where they are succeeding.
The latest example of this comes from this year's rookie of the year race, which by all accounts is coming down to Emeka Okafor and Ben Gordon at this point, two thirds into the season.
Now this isn't really unexpected, they were both high lottery picks, and high lottery picks that weren't coming straight from the senior prom at that. But Calhoun seems to be particularly good at getting college kids ready for the pros, and can use that as a real selling point to high school kids who are considering entering the draft. Rudy Gay and Charlie Villanueva are great examples. He can say to them, "Do a year or two in our program, and you can go from an early second round pick to a lottery pick - just look at what we did for Ray Allen and Caron Butler. Oh, and while you're here, you just might get to hoist some trophies."
So with all that in mind, I got to thinking, which NCAA program currently has the best stock in the NBA? If you put them together on a court, who would win? I haven't decided how far I can go with this, as a lot of my NBA interest goes only as far as the connection I make between it and the NCAA's. But to start, I've come up with a few bits of information as I investigate that:
Unofficial count:
20 colleges have 5 or more players currently in the pros.
The kings:
13 - Kentucky
10 - Duke
9 - Connecticut
9 - Kansas
8 - Arizona
8 - Maryland
8 - North Carolina
Of the 20 teams, four of them could only yield enough for one side of a pick-up basketball game. Villanova and Xavier would sport some real scrubs in that lineup, while Florida is disqualified by having to start Andrew DeClerq. Alabama fields a decent team, though they would be a bit undersized with McDyess, Sprewell, and Horry up front. But we'll substitute them in for Georgetown which has 6 powerforward/centers and only one guard (Iverson).
So that brings us to a field of 16. I have a feeling that the teams with the larger output above (except Maryland), would be the ones to beat, but I'll look more at that later.
The latest example of this comes from this year's rookie of the year race, which by all accounts is coming down to Emeka Okafor and Ben Gordon at this point, two thirds into the season.
Now this isn't really unexpected, they were both high lottery picks, and high lottery picks that weren't coming straight from the senior prom at that. But Calhoun seems to be particularly good at getting college kids ready for the pros, and can use that as a real selling point to high school kids who are considering entering the draft. Rudy Gay and Charlie Villanueva are great examples. He can say to them, "Do a year or two in our program, and you can go from an early second round pick to a lottery pick - just look at what we did for Ray Allen and Caron Butler. Oh, and while you're here, you just might get to hoist some trophies."
So with all that in mind, I got to thinking, which NCAA program currently has the best stock in the NBA? If you put them together on a court, who would win? I haven't decided how far I can go with this, as a lot of my NBA interest goes only as far as the connection I make between it and the NCAA's. But to start, I've come up with a few bits of information as I investigate that:
Unofficial count:
20 colleges have 5 or more players currently in the pros.
The kings:
13 - Kentucky
10 - Duke
9 - Connecticut
9 - Kansas
8 - Arizona
8 - Maryland
8 - North Carolina
Of the 20 teams, four of them could only yield enough for one side of a pick-up basketball game. Villanova and Xavier would sport some real scrubs in that lineup, while Florida is disqualified by having to start Andrew DeClerq. Alabama fields a decent team, though they would be a bit undersized with McDyess, Sprewell, and Horry up front. But we'll substitute them in for Georgetown which has 6 powerforward/centers and only one guard (Iverson).
So that brings us to a field of 16. I have a feeling that the teams with the larger output above (except Maryland), would be the ones to beat, but I'll look more at that later.
# posted by Darlucky @ 5:14 PM 
