NCAAB

5 Great College Basketball Teams That Could've Been

Brett Oswalt  —  @bRo14thekid Jan 24th, 2017
If the NBA didn't come calling, which recent teams would've been the most loaded had their players stayed in school?

If you follow basketball at all -- whether you're a fan of the NBA, college hoops or both -- you've likely noticed that a lot of the top draft picks to come via the same set of college squads. Right now, Kentucky Wildcats and Duke Blue Devils are the premier programs for housing the top picks in future NBA drafts. They consistently recruit one of the nation's top five recruiting classes.

Coaches John Calipari and Mike Krzyzewski, along with several other heads of major NCAA programs, have taken advantage of the NBA's one-and-done rule enacted in 2005 by then-Commissioner David Stern. In case you're unaware of the controversial rule, this is the mandate which requires draft prospects be at least 19 years old and a year removed from their final year of high school before entering the NBA draft.

As a result, we've gotten an influx of players going to top programs just to be groomed by the top coaches and staffs for a year (if it's even a full year; see: Kyrie Irving). With so many players leaving early, this has robbed us of many could've-been college basketball super teams.

Today, we see these guys playing in the NBA across several different teams. But if these young NBA stars would've stayed in school, which college teams would've been best?

In using the players' advanced college numbers -- as well as our handy-dandy nERD metric, a ranking that measures a player's total contribution over the course of a season, based on efficiency -- we can take a look at some of the great what-if college hoops teams of the one-and-done era.

Let's get to it.

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