...He will be a big fish in a small pond at SLU, but playing against cupcakes will hurt his future big time I think.
...he made a huge mistake compared to the money he can make by making the NBA. Groce and the resources and exposure he gets at the University of Illinois is order of magnitudes better than what SLU can provide...
On a macro-level, I totally agree. If a player can prove he is one of the best in the B1G, that would seem to hold more weight than being the best in the A-10. More TV exposure, better level of competition, ability to create a brand, etc. And most guys that get drafted do tend to hail from one of the P5 or other stronger conferences, i.e., The American.
Still, going the non-traditional route and playing for a program in a lesser conference has still enabled numerous players to get drafted. Looking at the last seven drafts, on average 6-7 players are drafted each year from schools that hail from these smaller-type conferences. For instance, in the 2016 draft, the likes of Joel Bolomboy (F, Weber St.), Deandre' Bembry (SF, St. Joe's), Pascal Siakam (PF, NMSU) and Kay Felder (PG, Oakland) were picked. And despite being a 4yr starter and all B1G performer for IU, Yogi Ferrell, another 5'10" PG like Felder goes undrafted.
In the 2013 draft, 10 guys from schools like Lehigh, Murray St., Bucknell and Detroit were drafted, which when you take out the foreign players that year (14) comes out to over 20% of U.S. players selected coming from smaller schools. My guess without really looking into these use cases is that many of these kids got exposure in the NCAA tournament (think R.J. Hunter with Georgia St.) or got to the combine and killed it (like Felder did).
So while my heart wants to bag on the kid, the data doesn't necessarily reflect that going the A-10/SLU route would be a huge mistake as a route to get to the NBA. He just has to be all-world in conference, get his team to make a run in the NCAAs, and then get invited to the combines so as to test incredibly or performing exceptionally against the P5 guys. That's all.
Go