Culver tells a story....
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Yes… Lamb scored 22. Jones had 9.
But Davis had 16 rebounds, 6 blocked shots, 3 steals, and 5 assists, to go along with his 6 points.
Davis owned us.
Teague had 14, Gilchrist 11.
This is all I remember from that game.
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@drgnslayr AD was by far the best player that year, but UK wasn’t a OAD dominant team. That team was carried by the sophomores and UK doesn’t win that title without those guys like Lamb and Jones.
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I don’t discount the value of their upperclassmen. Jones and Lamb were great. But no way did they win a NC without Davis. They definitely wouldn’t have beat us in the NC game.
Hey… I’m becoming more against the OAD recruits. But in this year, UK relied on their freshmen as much as their upperclassmen.
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@drgnslayr UK has had better teams than that one that didn’t win the title because they were much more freshman dominant. The sophomores were a bigger difference than AD on that 2012 team.
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For sure.
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In 2012 UK had a great team. Davis was a transcendent player, but Jones, Kidd-Gilchrist and others were also heavily involved. That team was a couple of bad bounces away from going unbeaten (Indiana beat them on a buzzer beater, Vandy won the SEC title game).
The 2015 Duke squad didn’t really get a cakewalk. Their bracket as the #1 seed was 16, 8, 5, 2. In the Final Four, they got Michigan State (a 7 seed that got hot) then Wisconsin after the Badgers knocked off unbeaten Kentucky.
Can an OAD team win it all. Yes. Duke and Kentucky have both shown that. Will it happen regularly? Probably not, because in any given year, there will only be one or two teams with enough OAD star power to get it done, and some years there won’t even be that. And then that OAD team has to survive the season, including injuries, bad luck, etc.
Every national champion has to get a little lucky along the way. Virginia got a big call that went their way in the national semifinal, and they probably should have lost to Purdue in regulation in the regional final anyway. But they won the title (deservedly), so its their poise and experience that got them through. Nevermind that the same team lost to a 16 seed a year prior in part because they were banged up.
If you go through the last several title teams, basically every single one has had a game where they had to get a borderline call, or a fortunate bounce, in order to win the title. That’s the nature of winning six straight single elimination games. Somebody gets the bounces. Somebody else doesn’t. There is generally not enough of a talent separation in college basketball to make luck irrelevant.
@KUSTEVE, Yes, guys outside the Top 100 make the NBA. It happens every year. But run down the list of draftees again and you will notice something.
Here’s the list of guys that were top 40 recruits coming out of HS that were drafted this year:
Williamson, Barrett, Garland, White, Hayes, Reddish, Washington, Herro, Langford, Bazley, Little, Johnson, Bol, Porter, Walker, Waters and Hands.
That’s 17 of the 60 players drafted. Nearly 30% of the draft was high ranked players. 7 guys were international and not ranked. 7 others were ranked between 40 and 75.
So roughly one third of players drafted were high ranked players. About 10% each were either international or “mid range” players. The other roughly half the draft was ranked below that.
You may think that proves that the rankings are flawed, but it actually proves how accurate they are.
Looking back at ESPN’s 2017 rankings, there are 18 guys that are not currently either in the NBA or on a 2 way contract. That’s means 22 either are in the NBA or have signed two way contracts. That’s more than half. And most of the guys that haven’t are still in college (only Jontay Porter, Brandon McCoy and Billy Preston left college and were undrafted). So out of that top 40, 15 are still in college and could in theory be drafted next year or the following year.
That suggests that the rankings identified the best players pretty well, since after two years, most of those guys ranked high have already moved to the pros.
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Good post. Every team needs a few lucky bounces, and usually that means more than bounces in a game.
We had a good bounce in 2008 when BRush returned when he would have been gone had he been healthy.
I think the best bounces are getting players back that could have turned pro. We have perhaps 3 of these guys coming back, Devon, Doke and Silvio. I know there were no guarantees for any of them to make it had they gone, but clearly they have pro potential and could have gone.
I’m sure this situation has existed out there, but I can’t recall a team getting 3 guys back that could have easily gone.
BTW: Do you know… did we actively recruit Culver?
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@justanotherfan And moreover almost any kid in the top 40 is likely still playing college ball or is pro hooping somewhere.
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@justanotherfan Thanks for the information. We’ve had more than our share of highly ranked guys that haven’t done anything at all.
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Looking at Culver’s 24/7 page, it looks like the following schools offered him:
Texas Tech, Louisiana Tech, Texas, Baylor, Illinois, Memphis, Texas A&M, Oklahoma State, Oral Roberts, Rice, Sam Houston State, Santa Clara, TCU, UC-Irvine and UT-Arlington.
He was your classic regional/mid major recruit. It helps that he grew about three inches, but even with the growth, he probably was a fringe top 100 prospect at best.
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Some guys just have crazy unexpected development in college.
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So grammatically speaking is it a OAD or an OAD? Inquiring minds want to know…An does not roll off the tongue.
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Would you ever say an one or a one of a kind. Hmmm goes against the rules huh?
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One is pronounced wan, therefore it sound like a consonant, although it’s written as an vowel. … The word “one” is always pronounced “wun,” as if the vowel “o” in “one” is the consonant “w.” Therefore, the example sentence should be rendered as “a one-time opportunity.”
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Did you learn that at a university?
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Whether we like it or not, ranking systems are a part of basketball, and rightly so. I agree with others that most of those players stay playing ball. However… there really are indefinite opportunities in basketball for those who search hard enough. The NBA is limited, but just about every town in the world seems to have a pro team. It is a game that has gone “broadly abroad.”
I also think once a player gets ranked he has plenty of opportunities to develop his game to a higher level. Camps, leagues, tournaments… it never stops.
Rankings help develop players’ branding and that is a big part of their worth, whether it’s for a NBA tryout or for playing anywhere. All programs fight for prestige and they promote the players with the highest branding to not only get more fan followers, but to also recruit other high-quality players.
What a cleaver gimmick… variate seat color to make it look like there is a crowd.
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@Crimsonorblue22 Thanks, teacher…
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@Crimsonorblue22 See Jeff run. See Jeff run fast.
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@Marco correction, see d dot run fast! I’m giving you a zero!
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more stats fun about top 100 high school ranked players from 1998 to 2013 and how their careers panned out in the NBA:
27% of the 1,563 top-ranked high school players made it to the NBA and only 25% made it past their two-year rookie contract. Put another way, 441 of the 900 draft picks in that 15 year span were top 100 recruits. Just 31 players eventually reached “superstar” status.
But perhaps the top 100 is too broad of a categorization. Surely the top 10 players will make it to the NBA more often, right?
Players ranked in the top 10 certainly appear to have slightly better odds—a full 84% of them eventually made it to the NBA. Though with 60 draft picks a year, you might expect that number to be higher.
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I didn’t realize KU snags 16% of the top 10 talent…well that’s how some make it seem. Lol
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The “I” before “E” rule, as explained by Brian Regan.
“I" before “E” except after “C” and when sounding like “A” as in neighbor and weigh, and on weekends and holidays and all throughout May, and YOU’LL ALWAYS BE WRONG NO MATTER WHAT YOU SAY!!!”
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nuleafjhawk said:
The “I” before “E” rule, as explained by Brian Regan.
“I" before “E” except after “C” and when sounding like “A” as in neighbor and weigh, and on weekends and holidays and all throughout May, and YOU’LL ALWAYS BE WRONG NO MATTER WHAT YOU SAY!!!”
That’s a weird rule. Fancier than I thought. But I forfeit.
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nuleafjhawk said:
The “I” before “E” rule, as explained by Brian Regan.
“I" before “E” except after “C” and when sounding like “A” as in neighbor and weigh, and on weekends and holidays and all throughout May, and YOU’LL ALWAYS BE WRONG NO MATTER WHAT YOU SAY!!!”
All these ancient rules! Because of my English deficiency, I forfeit an opinion. My participation would not be efficient, or sufficient!
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drgnslayr said:
nuleafjhawk said:
The “I” before “E” rule, as explained by Brian Regan.
“I" before “E” except after “C” and when sounding like “A” as in neighbor and weigh, and on weekends and holidays and all throughout May, and YOU’LL ALWAYS BE WRONG NO MATTER WHAT YOU SAY!!!”
All these ancient rules! Because of my English deficiency, I forfeit an opinion. My participation would not be efficient, or sufficient!
Me no know… Coach Marco just pawn in game of life.
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Bosthawk said:
more stats fun about top 100 high school ranked players from 1998 to 2013 and how their careers panned out in the NBA:
27% of the 1,563 top-ranked high school players made it to the NBA and only 25% made it past their two-year rookie contract. Put another way, 441 of the 900 draft picks in that 15 year span were top 100 recruits. Just 31 players eventually reached “superstar” status.
But perhaps the top 100 is too broad of a categorization. Surely the top 10 players will make it to the NBA more often, right?
Players ranked in the top 10 certainly appear to have slightly better odds—a full 84% of them eventually made it to the NBA. Though with 60 draft picks a year, you might expect that number to be higher.
How many players can truly be “superstars” at any one time? Let’s say that a “superstar” is a player that is an All-NBA type talent. That means there are maybe 15-20 true superstars in the NBA at any one time. And because superstars will tend to stay in the league for a while, your superstars will tend to be the same year after year.
For example, Kobe Bryant was a “superstar” from probably 1999 or 2000 until 2010 or 2011 when injuries and age slowed him down. Lebron James has been a superstar since probably 2004 or 2005. Shaq was a superstar from 1994 or 1995 until 2006 at least. Kevin Garnett was a superstar from 1996 until at least 2009 or 2010. Tim Duncan was a superstar from 1999 until 2010 or 2011. So between those five guys, you had five of the 15-20 superstars in the league from 2004-2006, and between James, Duncan, Bryant and Garnett, they occupied four of those spots from 2004 through 2010. Not a lot of space for new guys to jump in and become superstars.
84% of top 10 prospects make the NBA. That again shows that the top ranked players are generally the best prospects. One or two out of each class don’t pan out, but the other eight usually do.
Meanwhile, if you picked a ten player sample of probably any other ranking (i.e. 11-20 or 55-64, or 110-119) you would probably find an attrition rate around 50%, if not higher, particularly once you get below about 350 or so. You would be very hard pressed to find even a handful of guys ranked past there that make the NBA, or even turn into above average college players.
The rankings aren’t perfect, but they are pretty solid.
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Excellent post. Don’t you think the rankings are a bit of “self-fulfilling prophecy?”
I’ve been around several players fresh out of D1 awaiting for their shot in the league. Most all of these guys jump to another level within that period of just a few months. They have agents, who connect them with the right trainers while they get their moments practicing for NBA teams.
You can easily see the difference in their conditioning just by seeing them in street clothes. It’s dramatic… and it’s also necessary if they want a real shot in the league.
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drgnslayr said:
Excellent post. Don’t you think the rankings are a bit of “self-fulfilling prophecy?”
I’ve been around several players fresh out of D1 awaiting for their shot in the league. Most all of these guys jump to another level within that period of just a few months. They have agents, who connect them with the right trainers while they get their moments practicing for NBA teams.
You can easily see the difference in their conditioning just by seeing them in street clothes. It’s dramatic… and it’s also necessary if they want a real shot in the league.
I don’t think the ratings are “self-fulfilling” in that guys end up being good because we are told they are good. The guys that are rated really high tend to be better. Even the ones that end up not being that great are generally still serviceable.
Take Quentin Grimes. He was bad for a top 10 recruit. But he was still just as good as anyone you could have gotten that was rated below 35. We have seen how guys in that range perform. You get Andrew White. Or Brannen Greene. Or Royce Woolridge. Or Anrio Adams. Those guys don’t produce what Grimes produced last season. They give you 3 or 4 points per game. A rebound or two maybe. Grimes was double that.
Was Grimes overrated? Probably. He should have been in the 20’s instead of the top 10. But had he been in the mid to late 20’s, his production would have been right in line.
But that’s the thing. Even when the ratings miss, they can be telling. A top 10 recruit will at least give top 40 type production, even if they are overrated. A top 50 recruit will likely become productive at some point in their career.
Anything below 50 is a crap shoot.
