Ken Pomeroy predicts the Kentucky Wildcats NBA First Rounders and Orlando Antigua is a walking miracle

Mandatory Credit: Mark Zerof-USA TODAY Sports

In an interesting article penned by several writers for Sports Illustrated, they have named and offered explanation to the Top NBA Power Players of 2014 and, to the shock of hardly anyone, John Calipari has found his way onto that list.  No, this isn’t your chance to turn into a “hater” but the guy keeps sending guys to the NBA that are much more prepared than other college coaches so it tracks that he’d be listed.

"The Groomer"

"Say what you will about John Calipari’s ability to coach in the NBA — in two-plus seasons he was 72-112 — but you would be hard-pressed to find anyone who doubts his ability to prepare players for the NBA. From Marcus Camby to Derrick Rose to Anthony Davis, Calipari-coached teams have been a pipeline to the next level. This year, Calipari may have his best pro crop of all. In addition to Alex Poythress and Willie Cauley-Stein — sophomore holdovers from last season’s ballyhooed freshman class — the ‘Cats replenished the ranks with a glittering class of prospective one-and-doners. The backcourt will be manned by twins Andrew and Aaron Harrison, two big, physical guards, and James Young, a quick two-guard. Up front, they brought in Julius Randle, a dynamic inside-out threat and potential top pick. After averaging 67.5 points last season — Kentucky’s lowest since 1952 — Calipari plans to emphasize the dribble-drive offense more, and says this team has the talent to be the best to play in that system. Indeed, UK’s success this spring could be the NBA’s gain next summer. — Chris Mannix"

Now get ready for your daily dose of nerd because here comes Ken Pomeroy.  Ken does ridiculous statistical analysis on so many things and it’s all very complicated but very well respected.  So to further shore up John Calipari’s proclivity to turn HS phenoms into College studs into NBA Super Stars, Ken has predicted the number of First Round draft picks to come out of Kentucky.  The number might surprise you.

"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 the 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. 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.)"