After anointing Luke Martinez the best D-I player from North Dakota a couple of weeks ago, I thought it would be fun to figure out who had geographical bragging rights in each state and Canadian province on the continent. The table below summarizes that research. I’ve taken the kPOY formula out of the garage for the first time this season and used it to determine “best” in these cases. (We’ll get to the issue of revealing the first kPOY top ten list later in the week.)
In case the trivia of the best player in each state doesn’t excite you, I’ve added more trivia. The number of players from each state that have registered at least 10% of his team’s minutes is listed along with how that translates to a per-capita (one million capitas, technically) figure. The list is sorted in decreasing order by the latter number.
Drew Cannon did the definitive work on the geography of D-I talent in the off-season, so I’m not going to make any groundbreaking claims that add to his exhaustive work. But there are a couple of things I find interesting about the per-capita distribution of players. First, the deep south produces more players than I expected, basically leading the nation in player density as a region. Drew’s work showed that more of these players are at low-major programs than in most states, so it’s not like there’s a gold mine of talent there, but at least there are players.
That’s more than you can say for New England where kids just don’t care as much about hoops relative to the rest of the country. The only player from Maine getting significant minutes is Notre Dame’s Tom Knight, and he might quibble with my use of “significant”. Sure, you can say the lack of urban areas suppresses the count in places like Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine, but that doesn’t explain why the number of players from Rhode Island, Connecticut, and Massachusetts is roughly on par with those from Alaska when scaled for population.
Rk Players Per 1M Best player 1 District of Columbia 22 36.6 Thomas Robinson, Kansas 2 Maryland 108 18.7 Will Barton, Memphis 3 Louisiana 79 17.4 Scott Saunders, Belmont 4 Georgia 167 17.2 Tony Mitchell, Alabama 5 Mississippi 51 17.2 Isaiah Canaan, Murray State 6 Indiana 87 13.4 Cody Zeller, Indiana 7 Virginia 107 13.4 Mike Scott, Virginia 8 Illinois 169 13.2 Anthony Davis, Kentucky 9 Tennessee 80 12.6 Chris Crawford, Memphis 10 North Carolina 118 12.4 Ryan Kelly, Duke 11 Delaware 11 12.3 Jarrett Mann, Stanford 12 Iowa 34 11.2 Doug McDermott, Creighton 13 Arkansas 32 11.0 A.J. Walton, Baylor 14 Alabama 52 10.9 JaMychal Green, Alabama 15 New Jersey 94 10.7 Tyshawn Taylor, Kansas 16 Michigan 94 9.5 Draymond Green, Michigan St. 17 Texas 229 9.1 J'Covan Brown, Texas 18 New York 173 8.9 Kevin Jones, West Virginia 19 South Carolina 41 8.9 LaRon Dendy, Middle Tennessee 20 Minnesota 47 8.9 Jordan Taylor, Wisconsin 21 Florida 166 8.8 John Henson, North Carolina 22 Nebraska 16 8.8 Antoine Young, Creighton 23 Missouri 52 8.7 Marcus Denmon, Missouri 24 South Dakota 7 8.6 Chad White, South Dakota St. 25 Kentucky 37 8.5 Darius Miller, Kentucky 26 Ohio 98 8.5 Jared Sullinger, Ohio State 27 Kansas 24 8.4 Kyle Weems, Missouri State 28 Nevada 22 8.1 Pierre Jackson, Baylor 29 Oregon 30 7.8 Mike Moser, UNLV 30 California 286 7.7 Rob Jones, St. Mary's 31 Pennsylvania 97 7.6 Herb Pope, Seton Hall 32 Wisconsin 43 7.6 Jake Koch, Northern Iowa 33 Utah 20 7.2 Brandon Davies, BYU 34 Wyoming 4 7.1 Adam Waddell, Wyoming 35 Connecticut 25 7.0 T.J. Robinson, Long Beach State 36 Oklahoma 25 6.7 Noah Hartsock, BYU 37 Rhode Island 7 6.7 Erik Murphy, Florida 38 Washington 40 5.9 Joe Harris, Virginia 39 Alaska 4 5.6 Damen Bell-Holter, Oral Roberts 40 Arizona 35 5.5 Ryan Evans, Wisconsin 41 West Virginia 10 5.4 Todd Mayo, Marquette 42 Massachusetts 31 4.7 Evan Smotrycz, Michigan 43 North Dakota 3 4.5 Luke Martinez, Wyoming 44 New Mexico 8 3.9 Chad Adams, New Mexico 45 Idaho 6 3.8 Mitch Bruneel, Utah State 46 Colorado 19 3.8 Dario Hunt, Nevada 47 Vermont 2 3.2 Matt Glass, Vermont 48 New Hampshire 4 3.0 Luke Apfeld, Vermont 49 Ontario 40 3.0 Kevin Pangos, Gonzaga 50 Nova Scotia 2 2.1 Chris Johnson, St. Bonaventure 51 Montana 2 2.0 Josh Huestis, Stanford 52 Quebec 10 1.3 Kris Joseph, Syracuse 53 British Columbia 5 1.1 Robert Sacre, Gonzaga 54 Maine 1 0.8 Tom Knight, Notre Dame 55 Hawaii 1 0.7 Jeremiah Ostrowski, Hawaii