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Message: [QUOTE="pj, post: 1976433, member: 2524"] John Calipari is the best recruiter every to coach a college basketball program. He has an amazing, amazing track record of bringing top talent to Kentucky. But what is his record of developing talent? Has he improved his recruits NBA prospects? And how would Kevin Ollie compare on the same metrics? I'm a skeptic of the UK idolatry but we need to run the numbers. Here's what I did: - Track the 247sports composite ranking of every recruit at UK from 2009-present (Calipari's recruits) and UConn from 2013-present (Ollie's recruits) - Generally, about 2/3 of the 60 NBA draft picks played US high school ball and were ranked by recruiting services. If high school ranks were preserved through college, you'd expect a player ranked 1-20 to become an NBA first round draft pick and a player ranked 21-40 to become a second round draft pick. - As a general rule, you can translate high school rank to NBA draft position by multiplying by 1.5. So a high school number 2 prospect projects to be an NBA #3 pick, high school number 10 projects to a #15 pick, etc. - Compare each incoming recruit's high school rank to his NBA pick number. If the NBA pick is 1.5 times the high school rank or less, player gets an OVERPERFORM rating for progressing in college. If the NBA pick is more than 1.5 times the high school rank, player gets an UNDERPERFORM. - I gave OVERPERFORM ratings to any player drafted regardless of high school ranking; UNDERPERFORM only to players ranked in the high school top 40. What I found: Ollie gets 1 UNDERPERFORM (Daniel Hamilton, HS rank 17, draft pick 56). He can pick up an OVERPERFORM this coming May if Amida Brimah (HS rank 241, NBAdraft.net projected draft pick 58) gets drafted. So he's 0-1 with potential to go to 1-1. Calipari gets 10 OVERPERFORMs and 20 UNDERPERFORMs. 10 Overperformers: Eric Bledsoe, HS 57/NBA 18; John Wall HS 2/NBA 1; Enes Kanter HS 9/NBA 3; Michael Kidd-Gilchrist HS 3/NBA 2; Anthony Davis HS 1/NBA 1; Willie Cauley-Stein HS 43/NBA 6; Devin Booker HS 22/NBA 13; Trey Lyles HS 10/NBA 6; Karl-Anthony Towns HS 5/NBA 1; Jamal Murray HS 10/NBA 7. 20 Underperformers: Darnell Dodson 7/not drafted, Daniel Orton 16/29, DeMarcus Cousins 3/5, Eloy Vargas 16/not drafted, Doron Lamb 23/42, Terrence Jones 8/18, Brandon Knight 5/8, Kyle Wiltjer 20/not drafted, Marquis Teague 7/29, Archie Goodwin 15/29, Alex Poythress 7/not drafted, Nerlens Noel 1/6, Marcus Lee 18/transferred, Dakari Johnson 10/48, James Young 9/17, Aaron Harrison 6/not drafted, Andrew Harrison 5/44, Julius Randle 2/7, Tyler Ulis 19/34, Skal Labissiere 2/28. For another view of this data, let's add a third category of "performance in line with HS ranking"; and only count as underperformers those who are not drafted. Calipari has a generally excellent track record of maintaining his recruit's expected draft position. Of these 30 players: - 22 performed in line with expectations based on high school rank. - 2 significantly overperformed (Bledsoe and Cauley-Stein). - 6 significantly underperformed. These included 3 undrafted Top 10 rankings (Dodson, Poythress, Aaron Harrison), 2 undrafted top 20 rankings (Vargas, Wiltjer) and 1 transfer who tested the draft and failed (Marcus Lee). In this alternative view, Ollie has one in line performer (Hamilton) and one potential overperformer this year (Brimah), no underperformers yet. It's too early to tell how good Ollie will be at developing top players but Jalen Adams, Alterique Gilbert, and Makai Ashton-Langford are all top 40 HS players projected to be 2nd round picks, so we'll know more when they graduate. Conclusion: I still don't get the Calipari idolatry. He probably doesn't harm his players' prospects but there's no evidence that he helps them either. He's had the luxury of working with top 10 players almost exclusively since arriving at Kentucky and these are very low-risk talents. His recruiting may be slipping a notch, as he's now taking more players in the 20-50 range, so we may get a better measure on his player development skills in 3-4 years. By the same token, it's too early to judge Ollie, but he's beginning to get players in the 20-50 range, and so we'll be able to judge his NBA development ability in 3-4 years too. [/QUOTE]

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