A couple of months ago I questioned the importance of NBA talent in building a team which can make it to the Sweet 16 but no one was able to quantify it's importance.
Since then, I have compiled the roster of every team which made the Sweet 16 from 2003 through 2010^. I stopped at 2010 as I wanted all players included in the data-set to have had the opportunity to play their full eligibility in college and have time to become a career NBA player**.
It is evident that having at least one NBA caliber player* on the roster is very important in making the Sweet 16 and having at least one NBA player on the roster is nearly required to achieve repeated success.
I did not evaluate the teams which did not make the Sweet 16 (or even the NCAA Tournament) but I am confident that having NBA caliber talent does not guarantee making the Sweet 16.
It is a chicken-egg situation, does NBA talent generate success or does success procure NBA talent?
Either way, I remain optimistic that VT can make the Sweet 16.
- There could be a Sweet 16 run next year for VT. There is talent on the roster right now that is still developing.
- The success over the past 3 years could help Buzz bring in more talented players to VT. Having Butler and Crowder at Marquette certainly resulted in Buzz's best years just a the data would suggest.
I have had season tickets since the 90s, I call it optimism but it may really be a combination of glutton for punishment and delusion. Either way, November will be here before I know it.
^ Only players who played at least 100 minutes during the season were included in the data-set.
* A NBA player is an individual with at least 1 year of NBA NBA service in this data-set.
** A career NBA player is an individual with 4 years of NBA service in this data-set. NBA players are vested for a pension after 3 years of service.
NCAA Roster & Record of Minutes Played from www.sports-reference.com
NBA Service information from Basketball.RealGM.com
I can add the data from any year upon request.
Comments
A quick look at the teams which made a Sweet 16 and did not have an NBA player on their roster.
Great analysis- very interesting. I think that it seems "matchups" are simply the key to advancing in the NCAA tourney. Everyone says "guard play" or this and that- but it seems that to advance to the second weekend you need the right bracket for your team more so than a couple "nba players"- just seems that way. So many upsets and teams with higher seeds lose regularly in this tournament.
I see only 10% of the teams making the Sweet 16 without a NBA player as a pretty tough technique to replicate (and these teams have not had repeated success in reaching the Sweet 16).
I also see that the lack of NBA players may limit your regular season success (see seeding). It would be a bear to evaluate seeding vs NBA talent especially with the autobid's impact as inclusion in the NCAA tournament is not achieved in the same manner for each team. I guess you could evaluate all of the at large bids and their roster.
I do think we would agree that having NBA talent is NO GUARANTEE.
Agree- and let's not lose sight of the fact that the two games are so different. Today, the NBA game and college game share an orange ball and 10 foot hoop- and that's about it. Look at who is drafted 1-5 in the NBA now. some of them average 5-6 ppg in college and never really dominate- but they are "long, athletic, etc." the best college players have not correlated strongly to the top nba picks in a long long time. John Collins last year is one glaring example- he was the best player in college arguably, and was selected mid-first round. The Kentucky team that didn't reach the final four yet had their entire starting 5 drafted another example. Its a different skillset now.
Thank you for doing the work- I remember when this came up a few weeks ago thinking it would be worth looking at but didn't want to sink the time and effort into pulling it together. Looking at who beat these teams you mentioned w/o NBA talent in the tourney:
2003 Oklahoma lost to Syracuse, who won the tourney that year and had Hakim Warrick along with some dude named Carmelo;
2008 Tennessee lost to Louisville with Earl Clark and Terrence Williams, who were both lottery picks;
2003 Butler lost to that aforementioned Oklahoma team. 2005 Milwaukee lost to Illinois with Deron Williams. Mason beat a loaded UConn team (Rudy Gay, Hilton Armstrong, Josh Boone and Marcus Williams all played in the NBA) but got rolled by an even more loaded Florida team (Noah, Horford, Corey Brewer). Larranaga is a wizard when he's an underdog and when he's favored his brain occasionally short-circuits.
NBA talent in and of itself doesn't guarantee anything. Kentucky's won just one title under Calipari despite having craptons of NBA guys. 2008 UCLA had Love, Westbrook and Collison and lost to Memphis with Derrick Rose. But at some point you need lottery talent to win games against lottery talent. Even the 2010 Butler Cinderella team had a lottery pick.
Hey, didn't Larranaga's team have 1 or 2 lottery picks that season (I'm sure he had at least 1, but I forgot his name)??
I could be wrong...but I don't recall a single player from that Mason Final 4 run either being drafted or ever making it to the NBA. I know a lot of them went on to have good careers internationally, but I don't think there were any NBA players on that team
I guess you're right. Thought Jai Lewis or Lamar Butler were the ones, but upon further inspection, I see that they were not.
I knew Jai Lewis definitely wasn't, after he didn't get drafted in the NBA draft, he was training at a facility near my house to try to make it in the NFL. IIRC he went through either offseason workouts or training camp with Giants before pursuing basketball overseas
Yeah, I saw that. Thought Jai could've been an end-of 1st or somewhere in the 2nd rounder.
Interesting question - What is the average roster age of the Sweet 16 teams without any NBA players?
The roster doesn't list class or age so I would have to add that individually for each player, sorry.
Each roster is sorted by minutes played and there are some NBA players that were 7th, 8th etc in minutes played. My cursory impression is that there are other NBA players on teams which have the depth to keep a future NBA player on the bench but I have not critically evaluated the data.
Oklahoma, Butler, WVU, Wichita, & Tenn are programs with cache that have made the Sweet 16 without a NBA caliber player. (Oklahoma did have Hollis Price - All American on the roster in 03)
I am not sure anyone here wants to emulate the program of:
Texas Tech, Milwaukee, George Mason, Southern Illinois (beat VT to make Sweet 16), & Northern Iowa.
They caught lightning in a bottle.
I guess that was my question - were the exceptions veteran squads that played well, but didn't have any NBA players, but had a ton of experience (Oklahoma I imagine) or were they 'lucky'/hot at the right time/etc (other examples you gave). Thanks for the research. Great info.
Sometimes it's easy to forget that a lot of the players are just teenagers and that it's legitimately difficult to win in the tournament.
A similarly fun but incredibly monumental undertaking that I wouldn't wish on anyone is looking at all the college teams that had NBA lottery picks on their rosters and didn't make the Sweet 16. There are MVPs and All-Pros who couldn't win two games in the tournament and that's fascinating to me. Kevin Durant at Texas and James Harden at Arizona St come to mind. There were many presumable lottery picks this year that didn't make it to the Sweet 16 such as Bridges and Jackson (MSU), Ayton (Arizona), Bamba (Texas), Porter Jr (Missouri), Collin Sexton (Bama), and Trae Young (Oklahoma).
along the same lines, you could look at 1st round draft picks, superbowl winners, or probowlers who were never on dominant teams in college (Chris Long, anyone?)
I think you'd have to restrict it to first round picks just because of the sheer roster size of football teams at both levels.
It certainly is not a guarantee to make the Sweet 16 with a presumable lottery pick.
It is amazing to look at some of the rosters with so much talent. It also shows how hard it is to be a career NBA player.
This is just the Midwest Sweet 16 from the 2003 NCAA Tournament
These players/teams still have to go and beat another talent laden team, or a more experienced team, or a more consistent team, etc. It is really hard to consistently compete in the top echelon on NCAA basketball.
According to Chase's wiki he never played a regular season NBA game. Seems odd to count that as "nba player" - I imagine a lot more guys that have played in the sweet 16 were invited to an NBA camp or preseason roster at some point. did you count those too? just asking?
Brian Chase signed a contract with both the Jazz and the Heat during the 06-07 season.
https://basketball.realgm.com/player/Brian-Chase/Summary/880
I evaluated every player, on every roster through this site. It is 978 players and I hope there are no errors as it was completed manually.
I saw that- but he has no "nba" stats listed in basketballreference.com at all- which typically means he never played in a regular season game.
Every roster was evaluated the same. We can argue the semantics of if a guy was an NBA player or not but putting pen to paper is good enough for this evaluation in my mind.
This is also why there is a career NBA player component.
For the sake of the argument, if we were discussing baseball, would we include players who signed a contract for the parent club - say, the Braves - but never got promoted to the major leagues and spent his whole career in the minors never getting past AAA?
That's the case with Brian Chase; though he signed 2 NBA contracts, he never got promoted out of the D-League. That's not semantics; that's how the business works.
If you want to verify that every player which signed an NBA contract got into a game, be my guest. We can add a minutes played or points scored component too but I do not have the time to complete that evaluation.
Some players make more money in Europe so they do not come back for a NBA minimum contract. I am not going to put in the time/effort to account for that factor either.
There had to a an cut-off and I determined that one year of NBA service was sufficient to determine that the player was a higher talent level.
VT has had THREE guys even sign an NBA contract during the time evaluated. It is hard to achieve. Hollis Price, Shan Foster, Chris Lofton, Scottie Reynolds, Jon Scheyer, Marcus Denmon were all some level of All-Americans and did not ever sign a NBA contract.
I respect that and know its a pain to run the data, but "actually played in the NBA" seems like a reasonable cutoff.
I am content with the evaluation.
Considered it erroneous if you want.
I think it's fair. As long as you're clear that you're considering an "NBA player" to be "signed an NBA contract" and apply as that as the criteria across all rosters, then I don't see an issue. In my head, it's somewhat similar to using "NFL draft picks" to evaluate a college's output for a football program, even though some draft picks don't even make the team out of training camp. The front office thought their talent warranted paying directly for further, exclusive evaluation.
Too bad NAW was a 1 and done guy. /s
So you are telling me this was supposed to be the year? I don't know if my heart can take another 25 years of this.
/s
I'd be interested in a similar study for 5-star players vs national championship appearances in football. Does it take 5-star talent to win the whole thing or just a ton of 4-star?
Use the search feature... it has been discussed at length...multiple times...in multiple threads.
EDIT: Here's a good place to start. Trust me, there's more. 1 click = 1 star
Semi-relevant: According to this reddit post, there is not a single one-and-done player in this year's final four.
This post is more than semi-relevant.
There has to be a balance of talent (the most talented players being one-and-done), development/maturation/experiance and right player for the system. Consistently combining all of that and in the correct positions on the court and you have the perfect coach.
Talent is not enough to make a program a consistent winner but a lack of talent appears to really hamstring a program.
Very well put. Also applies to football.
Great post.
Jarell Eddie appears to be missing though. He did have at least one year overlap with Malcolm.Just realized your data runs through 2010.