Analysis of Schools Most 'Efficient' at Producing NBA Draft Picks (From Emory Univ)

Although it isn't something that was published in an academic journal or anything, I found this to be a pretty interesting article by a faculty member of the business school at Emory University. Basically, he tries to identify which college basketball programs do the best job of getting their guys into the NBA draft while taking into account how players were rated coming out of high school. In other words, what schools have the best coaches when it comes to talent evaluation and player development.

Taken into consideration are the ratings of all division I recruits from 2002 onward and each player selected beginning with the 2006 NBA draft. There isn't any complex methodology involved, or even anything you wouldn't know without taking Intro to Stats. Regardless, it seems like a fairly decent, objective approach that makes for a reasonable analysis.

Here are the results they came up with. The first table considers players taken in both rounds. The second table, however, only factors in guys that went in the 1st round. So generally speaking, that's probably the more meaningful set of results given that those taken in the 2nd round are much less likely to make a final roster.

Heyyyy what a surprise, John Beilein is awesome.

Perhaps the most interesting result we can extract from this analysis is which schools struggle to convert talent into NBA players: out of the 68 BCS schools evaluated, Duke finished at 51 and Michigan State at 61. In the case of Michigan State, only two of the six 5-Star recruits were drafted. Even worse, none of the twelve 4-Star recruits were drafted. So while Tom Izzo and Mike Krzyzewski are great coaches when it comes to tournament success, a high school recruit may want to think twice before choosing these schools.