What to expect from elite college basketball freshmen in Age-Limit era
December 17, 2009 2:01 PM
Texas' Kevin Durant and Kansas State's Michael Beasley may have ruined it for everyone.
By competing for national player-of-the-year honors in the first two seasons after the NBA barred players from jumping straight into the draft out of high school, they became -- and almost unfairly so -- the benchmarks for top-10 recruits. Ohio State's Greg Oden and Memphis' Derrick Rose didn't help, either, leading their teams to national title-game appearances as freshmen. Too often, fans obsessing over loaded recruiting classes hope their incoming freshmen ranked in the top-10, top-50, or in most absurd cases, top-100, will be capable of star-level production from day one.
Those same fans might temper their expectations after examining the past three years of freshman-class data.
Luke Winn
By competing for national player-of-the-year honors in the first two seasons after the NBA barred players from jumping straight into the draft out of high school, they became -- and almost unfairly so -- the benchmarks for top-10 recruits. Ohio State's Greg Oden and Memphis' Derrick Rose didn't help, either, leading their teams to national title-game appearances as freshmen. Too often, fans obsessing over loaded recruiting classes hope their incoming freshmen ranked in the top-10, top-50, or in most absurd cases, top-100, will be capable of star-level production from day one.
Those same fans might temper their expectations after examining the past three years of freshman-class data.
Luke Winn
Filed under: College Basketball, Illini Basketball
