DraftExpress<\/a> before the college basketball season for each of the last six years. (I\u2019d use Chad Ford, too, but DraftExpress\u2019s 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.)<\/p>\nSix years isn\u2019t as much data as I would like, especially since some of the forecasts from last year can’t be judged yet, but it\u2019s 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\u2019s the year of the mock draft or some later year. <\/p>\n
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. <\/p>\n
Here\u2019s where DraftExpress lists Kentucky\u2019s 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. <\/p>\n
Mock Player Rd1 Lottery\n 2 Randle .944 .801\n 8 An Harrison .835 .535\n15 Cauley-Stein .676 .313\n21 Johnson* .534 .195\n22 Aa Harrison* .511 .181\n23 Young* .489 .167\n28 Poythress .386 .115\n-- Lee .050 .010\n<\/pre>\n* 2015 Mock<\/p>\n
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…<\/p>\n
Chances of X Kentucky players being picked in first round<\/u><\/p>\n0: 0.02%\n1: 0.6%\n2: 4.6%\n3: 16.6%\n4: 30.2%\n5: 29.6%\n6: 15.0%\n7: 3.3%\n8: 0.1%\n\n<\/pre>\nIf we had to pick a number, the best guess would be that Kentucky has four first-rounders on the roster. Though it\u2019s 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\u2019s slightly more uncertainty involved for those predictions than is accounted for here.<\/p>\n
For some context, last season\u2019s projected #1 at this time of year was Shabazz Muhammad who slipped to 14. (I\u2019m assuming we know Randle\u2019s 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\u2019s in this sample went in the first round, just two went in the lottery.<\/p>\n
Speaking of the lottery, I found it interesting that, given the hype surrounding this year\u2019s team, just two Wildcats are projected to go in the top 14. Here\u2019s a breakdown of how many players we should expect to get picked in the lottery, based on the current projections\u2026<\/p>\n
Chances of X Kentucky players being picked in lottery<\/u><\/p>\n0: 3.1%\n1: 19.7%\n2: 36.0%\n3: 27.9%\n4: 10.8%\n5: 2.3%\n6: 0.2%\n7: 0.01%\n8: zero\n\n<\/pre>\nTwo 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\u2019s not the only way to compare the classes.)<\/p>\n
Below, I’ve provided the complete table with a player\u2019s 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\u2019t 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. <\/p>\n
Mock Draft Rd1 Lottery\n 1 .985 .960 .853\n 2 .980 .944 .801\n 3 .975 .928 .752\n 4 .971 .911 .705\n 5 .965 .893 .660\n 6 .960 .875 .617\n 7 .955 .855 .575\n 8 .949 .835 .535\n 9 .943 .814 .497\n10 .936 .792 .461\n11 .929 .770 .427\n12 .922 .747 .395\n13 .915 .724 .366\n14 .907 .700 .338\n15 .899 .676 .313\n16 .891 .652 .289\n17 .882 .628 .267\n18 .873 .604 .247\n19 .864 .581 .228\n20 .854 .557 .211\n21 .844 .534 .195\n22 .834 .511 .181\n23 .824 .489 .167\n24 .813 .467 .155\n25 .802 .446 .143\n26 .791 .425 .133\n27 .779 .405 .123\n28 .768 .386 .115\n29 .756 .367 .106\n30 .744 .349 .099\n31 .731 .332 .092\n32 .719 .315 .086\n33 .706 .300 .080\n34 .694 .284 .074\n35 .681 .270 .069\n36 .668 .256 .065\n37 .655 .243 .060\n38 .642 .231 .056\n39 .629 .219 .053\n40 .616 .207 .049\n41 .603 .197 .046\n42 .590 .186 .043\n43 .577 .177 .040\n44 .564 .168 .038\n45 .551 .159 .036\n46 .538 .151 .033\n47 .525 .143 .031\n48 .513 .136 .029\n49 .500 .129 .028\n50 .488 .122 .026\n51 .475 .116 .024\n52 .463 .110 .023\n53 .451 .104 .022\n54 .440 .099 .020\n55 .428 .094 .019\n56 .416 .089 .018\n57 .405 .085 .017\n58 .394 .081 .016\n59 .383 .076 .015\n60 .373 .073 .014\n<\/pre>\nDraft – chance of getting drafted
\nRd1 – chance of getting drafted in the first round (top 30)
\nLottery – chance of getting drafted in the top 14<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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\u2019ll find seven players on Kentucky\u2019s roster projected as first-round picks. But if you are […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[30],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=264"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1033,"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264\/revisions\/1033"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=264"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=264"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=264"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}