Last Thursday, I did a piece about
which coach was most successful in turning five-star recruits into NBA draft picks (hint: he's got great hair and drives a yellow Vespa). This week,
CBS Sports' Matt Norlander takes a different approach, researching which schools have had the most draft picks over the last fifteen years. Not surprisingly,
Kentucky and Duke are atop that list, with 23 players drafted a piece. Here's the entire top ten:
Kentucky (23)
Duke (23)
Kansas (21)
North Carolina (21)
UCLA (21)
Arizona (19)
UConn (18)
Texas (16)
Florida (15)
Syracuse (13)
Norlander broke it down by conference as well, and
Kentucky was also the school with the highest percentage of its conference's draft picks in the past fifteen years. Check out the graph above to see the percentage of picks from the draft in the past 15 years by conference. Norlander says Kentucky saves the SEC from an otherwise embarrassing record:
Kentucky saves the day, basically. Were it not for John Calipari, Florida would top this list. LSU being third will surprise those who forget that LSU is actually, probably, the biggest sleeping giant in major-conference college basketball. With the right coach to bring in the talent that's in that area, LSU can be consistently really good. It just cares so much more about football, and rightfully so. Speaking of can-be-better programs, Hog fans have to be gritting their teeth over the fact Mississippi State basketball has twice as many draft picks in 15 years as the Razorbacks.
Does anyone else crave pie now?
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