When the case is made for Kentucky being the best team in the country and possibly going 40-0, the argument is simply that they have an enormous amount of talent. Indeed, if you look at the most respected mock drafts, you’ll find seven players on Kentucky’s roster projected as first-round picks. But if you are predicting that Kentucky will have seven players picked in the first round, you are buying property at the intersection of Bad Prediction Boulevard and some other street named for bad predictions. Let me explain.
What we as a nation should be asking is, based on everything we know right now, how many first-round picks should we expect Kentucky to have? Fortunately, this is pretty easy to tackle. I went back and looked at the mock drafts from DraftExpress before the college basketball season for each of the last six years. (I’d use Chad Ford, too, but DraftExpress’s archives were easily accessible.) After charting how those projections ended up doing, I ran a regression on the data to determine the chance of each pick being drafted in the first round. (A logistic regression against the square root of mock draft position if you care.)
Six years isn’t as much data as I would like, especially since some of the forecasts from last year can’t be judged yet, but it’s good enough to get us a decent ballpark estimate for each projected pick. According to this analysis, a player projected to be taken 23rd has a 48.9 percent chance of eventually going in the first round, whether it’s the year of the mock draft or some later year.
So you have to be careful when stating that any player listed from 23-30 is a projected first-round pick this far away from the draft. Chances are against any of those players being drafted in the first round because there is so much uncertainty this far away. In addition to the potential of any of those players disappointing, a few guys listed below them will surprise some people and move up during the next seven months. For recent extreme examples, see Victor Oladipo, Ben McLemore, and presumably, Marcus Smart. All three were off the board at this time last season.
Here’s where DraftExpress lists Kentucky’s two returning players and their six incoming freshmen in their latest mock, along with the chance of each being picked in the first round or the top 14 based on the model.
Mock Player Rd1 Lottery 2 Randle .944 .801 8 An Harrison .835 .535 15 Cauley-Stein .676 .313 21 Johnson* .534 .195 22 Aa Harrison* .511 .181 23 Young* .489 .167 28 Poythress .386 .115 -- Lee .050 .010
* 2015 Mock
Using these probabilities we can break down the chances of Kentucky having various numbers of first round picks on its current roster. Here we go…
Chances of X Kentucky players being picked in first round
0: 0.02% 1: 0.6% 2: 4.6% 3: 16.6% 4: 30.2% 5: 29.6% 6: 15.0% 7: 3.3% 8: 0.1%
If we had to pick a number, the best guess would be that Kentucky has four first-rounders on the roster. Though it’s close enough between four and five that if you quibble with my methodology, you can go with five. For instance, you might say that Julius Randle is better than the typical player projected as the second-overall pick. I would not argue with that. However, also consider that three of the players listed are projected in the 2015 draft and I did not do any calibration for a mock draft two years out. One might assume that there’s slightly more uncertainty involved for those predictions than is accounted for here.
For some context, last season’s projected #1 at this time of year was Shabazz Muhammad who slipped to 14. (I’m assuming we know Randle’s true age.) Perry Jones was once projected to go #2 and fell to 28. Willie Warren was projected to go third and the Clippers selected him at 54. And while all six of the projected #4’s in this sample went in the first round, just two went in the lottery.
Speaking of the lottery, I found it interesting that, given the hype surrounding this year’s team, just two Wildcats are projected to go in the top 14. Here’s a breakdown of how many players we should expect to get picked in the lottery, based on the current projections…
Chances of X Kentucky players being picked in lottery
0: 3.1% 1: 19.7% 2: 36.0% 3: 27.9% 4: 10.8% 5: 2.3% 6: 0.2% 7: 0.01% 8: zero
Two still turns out to be the best prediction, although three is more likely than one. Anyway, the point here is that saying Kentucky returns two first-rounders and brings in the best freshman class ever is kind of misleading, at least on the former point. And whether this class can match or beat the three lottery picks produced by the Fab Five is far from a guarantee. (Though that’s not the only way to compare the classes.)
Below, I’ve provided the complete table with a player’s chances of getting drafted based on mock draft position before the start of the college basketball season. For the purposes of computing the regression, I ignored players who did not play at an American college and subsequently weren’t drafted. I expect this inflates the chances of getting drafted at all for guys who are projected in the back end of the second round. Otherwise, I feel like these numbers are close enough to reality for the purposes of this blog-quality discussion.
Mock Draft Rd1 Lottery 1 .985 .960 .853 2 .980 .944 .801 3 .975 .928 .752 4 .971 .911 .705 5 .965 .893 .660 6 .960 .875 .617 7 .955 .855 .575 8 .949 .835 .535 9 .943 .814 .497 10 .936 .792 .461 11 .929 .770 .427 12 .922 .747 .395 13 .915 .724 .366 14 .907 .700 .338 15 .899 .676 .313 16 .891 .652 .289 17 .882 .628 .267 18 .873 .604 .247 19 .864 .581 .228 20 .854 .557 .211 21 .844 .534 .195 22 .834 .511 .181 23 .824 .489 .167 24 .813 .467 .155 25 .802 .446 .143 26 .791 .425 .133 27 .779 .405 .123 28 .768 .386 .115 29 .756 .367 .106 30 .744 .349 .099 31 .731 .332 .092 32 .719 .315 .086 33 .706 .300 .080 34 .694 .284 .074 35 .681 .270 .069 36 .668 .256 .065 37 .655 .243 .060 38 .642 .231 .056 39 .629 .219 .053 40 .616 .207 .049 41 .603 .197 .046 42 .590 .186 .043 43 .577 .177 .040 44 .564 .168 .038 45 .551 .159 .036 46 .538 .151 .033 47 .525 .143 .031 48 .513 .136 .029 49 .500 .129 .028 50 .488 .122 .026 51 .475 .116 .024 52 .463 .110 .023 53 .451 .104 .022 54 .440 .099 .020 55 .428 .094 .019 56 .416 .089 .018 57 .405 .085 .017 58 .394 .081 .016 59 .383 .076 .015 60 .373 .073 .014
Draft – chance of getting drafted
Rd1 – chance of getting drafted in the first round (top 30)
Lottery – chance of getting drafted in the top 14